The House passed H.R. 4279 (PRO-IP Act) yesterday, which, among other things, would create the “Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative” under the Executive Office of the President.  It also increases the amount of resources and personnel related to CHIP (Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property) enforcement.

Read a summary here

See the full text here (PDF)

The EFF has this to say about the legislation (House Passes Controversial PRO IP Act):

“The most outrageous provisions would create new and unnecessary federal bureaucracies devoted to intellectual property enforcement. None seems more ridiculous than language creating a Cabinet-level “IP enforcement czar” that would report to the President and coordinate enforcement efforts across government, a proposal that has been loudly opposed by the Department of Justice.”

In a time when many public University systems are facing huge budget deficits (for example, the University of California faces a $400 million deficit), is creating a new layer of federal IP enforcement a useful allocation of funds?  Especially when the proposed legislation has been criticized by the very people it directs.  Rather than using funds to relieve financial stress in education, or any other strained public service, the 110th Congress has chosen to help organizations like the RIAA and MPAA fortify their own warped IP ideologies.

Stay tuned for more updates and analyses.

Last month, the U.S. chapters called our representatives to let them know about a flaw in H.R. 4137 and H.R.3746, two important education bills. We let people know that in its current form, the proposed legislation to renew the Higher Education Act of 1965 includes provisions that could unnecessarily burden networked computing in academic institutions. Despite our best efforts, however, the bills made it out of committee with the troubling language intact.

To emphasize our concern, we have drafted a Students for Free Culture Open Response to H.R. 4137 and H.R. 3746 that outlines the weaknesses embedded in the bills as written. Please take a moment to read the letter and share your thoughts in the comments section of this blog post. Please share it with your fellow students. We’d love to add more chapters to the list of supporters!

In addition, the XHTML/CSS version of the open response was designed very minimally so that you can easily adapt it to the needs on your campus. Perhaps you might re-use some of the text for an article in the newspaper? Perhaps it might provide the foundation for a letter to your administration?

There is still time to ensure that Higher Education Act is renewed without language that could hinder the use of technology on college campuses in the U.S.

NBC recently filed comments for the FCC recommending that ISPs be required to screen all the traffic passing over their network for copyright infringement. The social and economic costs of such a system would be enormous, and that’s on top of the concerns of technical feasibility!

Last week, FreeCulture.org signed a response statement along with Consumer Federation of America, EDUCAUSE, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Free Press, Knowledge Ecology International, Media Access Project, New America Foundation, Public Knowledge, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

NBC Universal (“NBC”) has asked the Commission to require that broadband providers “use readily available means to prevent the use of their broadband networks to transfer pirated content.” While we agree that there are appropriate ways to discourage copyright infringement on the Internet, NBC’s call to require that broadband providers use “bandwidth management tools” to effect this end is misguided. Any attempt to use this technology to control what may be done on the Internet will have serious unintended consequences. Particularly, these technologies limit First Amendment freedoms, stifle innovation, threaten personal privacy, and do little to address the underlying problem. Additionally, NBC’s proposal invites the FCC to exceed its jurisdiction.

You can read the full comments on Public Knowledge’s site or as a PDF.

Also check out NBC’s original comments (PDF link) for a good laugh, and Public Knowledge’s coverage and commentary.

In case you haven’t already heard, the schedule is up for the National FC Conference to take place on Saturday, May 26, at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.

The conference will run from 11am to 7:30pm in Austin Hall on the Law School campus. We have a lot of great speakers and people coming in, including representatives from the Free Software Foundation, One Laptop per Child, WMFU, DJ/Rupture, WikiEducator, Creative Commons, Science Commons, the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Freedomdefined.org, Binary Freedom, and more.

It’s not too late to register, so please email freeculture at hcs.harvard.edu or respond to our Facebook Event to sign up.

And watch out for the post-conference Dance Conspiracy…

UPDATE: Here are more details regarding the Conference:
Read the rest of this entry »

FreeCulture.org is a lead sponsor of the new Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States, along with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and several library and consumer groups. The petition specifically calls for the reintroduction and passage of the Federal Research Public Access Act in the 110th Congress.

Please show your support by adding your signature.

P.S. I don’t think I ever blogged my letter to the editor in response to the Washington Post’s article about the National Day of Action for Open Access, but it was published and is available here.

Get ready! Thursday, Feb. 15 is the National Day of Action for Open Access. Several of our chapters across the country will be hosting events — here they are:

• University of Florida (Gainesville, FL)
  Tabling: 11 am - 3 pm, Reitz Union Colonnade
  Panel: 7 pm, CSE room E221 (co-sponsored with UAEM)
  Speakers: Gavin Baker, Free Culture; Ashley Wills, UAEM; Stephanie Haas, Digital Library Center
  Contact: Gavin Baker
• University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
  Panel: 3 pm, Annenberg Center for Communication, 734 West Adams Blvd.
  Speakers: Cory Doctorow, Sasha Chock
  Contact: Cameron Parkins
• Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA)
  Tabling: during lunch and dinner, top of dining hall (Sharples)
  Panel: 7:30 pm, Scheuer Room, Kohlberg Hall
  Contact: Nicholas LaRacuente
• Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
  Event: 4:30 pm, press conference at Woodruff Library North Entrance
  Contact: Brian Pitts
• Emerson College (Boston, MA)
  Tabling: 11:30 am - 12:30 pm, around 80 Boylston St.
  Contact: Erin O’Brien
• Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
  Event: Handing out Open Access bookmarks to students throughout the day and distributing them to Harvard’s major libraries. Holding a forum the following week and submitting an Op-ed to the Harvard Crimson.
  Contact: Elizabeth Stark
• MIT (Cambridge, MA)
  Event: Placing pricetags on journals at the MIT libraries and distributing Open Access Bookmarks to students and libraries throughout the day.
  Contact: Mako Hill
• Northeastern University (Boston, MA)
  Event: Handing out Open Access Bookmarks to students and distributing to libraries throughout the day.
  Tabling: 2-4 pm, Main Library
  Contact: Christopher Budnick
• University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
  Tabling: 11 am - 1:30 pm, Locust Walk
  Contact: Steve McLaughlin
• Reed College (Portland, OR)
  Tabling: 11:30 am - 2:30 pm, in front of the cafeteria
  Contact: Max Berger
• Chadwick School (Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA)
  Tabling: 12:30 - 1:45 pm, Main deck (outside Christensen)
  Contact: D. Parker Phinney
• New York University (New York, NY)
  Will publish audio/video from the Taking Action on Open Access event.
  Contact: Fred Benenson

The following chapters have also said they’d be participating — contact them for details:

• University of Evansville (Evansville, IN)
  Contact: Andy Scudder
• Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster, PA)
  Contact: Ben DeRogatis
• Hamilton College (Clinton, NY)
  Contact: David Riordan
• Claremont Colleges (Claremont, CA)
  Contact: Karen Rustad
• Columbia University (New York, NY)
  Contact: Brendan Ballou
• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC)
  Contact: Erin Watson

I am proud to announce FreeCulture.org’s participation in the National Day of Action for Open Access on Feb. 15.

Together with the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, we are organizing the day to highlight students’ stake in the debate about access to research. We’re encouraging our chapters to take action on their campus to raise awareness at their school.

Read the press release here.

(FreeCulture.org is a member of the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.)

UPDATED: The meeting room is L6 at 6 pm on Saturday.

I’m organizing an informal “free culture” caucus at the National Conference on Media Reform this weekend in Memphis, Tenn. Since the conference is large and broad in scope, we want to create an opportunity for people with a particular interest in Internet policy and intellectual property to meet and socialize.

The tentative time of this meeting will be during dinner on Saturday night, 6-8 pm. I’ll ask the conference organizers for a room where everyone can meet at 6 pm, and we’ll move on to a restaurant from there. Details will be posted at the information desk throughout the conference, as well as updated on this post. If you would like me to email or call you when the details are finalized, email me at grbaker@ufl.edu (with your phone number, if applicable).

If you’ll be in Memphis, I hope you’ll join us!

FreeCulture.org has joined the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, which supports open public access to taxpayer-funded research. We join other student groups such as Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and the American Medical Student Association as members, along with a long list of universities, libraries, patients, and public interest groups.

Our reasons for joining are two-fold:

1. As the leading group of student advocates for the public interest in intellectual property and information & communications technology, we recognize access to research as a defining issue for our generation. Public access will lead to faster cures and treatments for disease, improve scholarship and research, and promote development. Whether it’s brilliant photos of space, GIS data, or scholarly journal articles, the people have a right to what they pay for. Access to publicly-funded research, and open access generally, is simply the right thing to do.
2. As students, we work with academic research all the time. After all, who isn’t required to write a research paper at some time or another? Whether it’s a term paper or a doctoral dissertation, scholarship always builds on the past. That requires access to the work of those who’ve come before us.

FreeCulture.org is proud to support the alliance’s work on behalf of the Federal Research Public Access Act and other efforts. Here at the University of Florida, we worked with the Student Senate to pass a resolution supporting FRPAA and open access — and succeeded. We hope to work with ATA to provide more information and resources to engage students on the issue in the future.

Last week, our pals at the EFF released the Bloggers’ FAQ on the Freedom of Information Act. The document is the latest addition to the EFF’s series of legal guides for bloggers. From the announcement:

“Online journalism makes a unique contribution to America’s vibrant culture of free speech,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. “Using the Freedom of Information Act is a powerful way to shed light on government activities and foster critical public debate about the discoveries.”

FreeCulture.org supports citizen journalism as part of a free and vibrant media landscape. We believe that all people have the right to open government.

Last March, we organized Blogshine Sunday to highlight bloggers’ experiences gaining access to government information. Efforts like the EFF’s guide will place bloggers and independent journalists on even better footing to hold governments accountable.