Students for Free Culture is proud to announce the inauguration its board of directors for the upcoming academic year.

It’s our pleasure to introduce the five members of the board:

• 
  Kevin Driscoll
  Kevin is the most senior member of the board, having served two prior terms. This month, he will finish his first year as a Ph.D. student at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism in the University of Southern California.

• 
  Andrea Fassina
  Andrea is currently in his third year of study doing a Master in Electronics at the University of York in England. Andrea recently started a chapter at U of York, and is leading an effort to bring SFC to the UK.

• 
  Adi Kamdar
  Adi is a rising junior at Yale University, where he is pursuing a Science, Technology, and Society major. He initiated the Yale chapter of SFC, which has garnered national attention for several of its campaigns. He is an undergraduate fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and will be working at the Berkman Center this summer.

• 
  Parker Phinney
  Parker is a rising junior at Dartmouth, majoring in Computer Science. Parker has founded two SFC chapters (one at his high school and another at Dartmouth), and has led the freeculture.org web team. He interned at Creative Commons last summer and worked this past Winter with SFC alumni on OpenHatch.org.

• 
  Aditi Rajaram
  Aditi is a rising senior at NYU, double majoring in Journalism and Political Science. She has served as Secretary and Vice President of Free Culture @ NYU, and will be serving as President next year.

Special advisors
2009-2010 board members Kevin Donovan and Ben Moskowitz will stay with SFC leadership as special advisors to the board of directors.

Next steps
Please keep an eye out, or join our discussion list, as we share the next steps for SFC and its expansion in the 2010-2011 school year! If you are interested in starting a chapter, or supporting the organization, please be in touch with board@freeculture.org.

We recently unveiled the first members of the Students for Free Culture Faculty Advisory Board: Larry Lessig, Mike Nelson, Ed Felten, and Gabriella Coleman. As I mentioned in that post, formalizing ties with academic leaders is an important step as SFC continues to mature and grow. Today, we’re honored to announce four additional members of the FAB!

Pat Aufderheide, University Professor @ American University; Director, Center for Social Media

Professor Aufderheide examines the effects of the law on artists and the public interest. She is the author of Communications Policy in the Public Interest and Documentary: A Very Short Introduction. In recent years, she has promoted fair use through a series of important best practice guides for various industries. She is closely tied to the artistic community through past and present positions with Kartemquin Films, Sundance Film Festival, and Independent Television Service. Her tweets are here.

Wendy Seltzer, Fellow, Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship; Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society

Wendy Seltzer has played an influential role in promoting freedom in the digital world for more than a decade. She has taught courses on the intersection of technology, commerce, and law at American University, Oxford, Brooklyn Law School and Northeastern. As the founder of the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse she brought attention to the unfounded legal threats dampening free speech online. She serves on the board of the Tor Project to support privacy online and on the board of the World Wide Web Foundation to advance the web for human empowerment. Her prolific activities are chronicled on her Twitter account here.

James Boyle, William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law @ Duke Law School; Co-founder, Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Professor Boyle is a teacher and writer studying the rising conflict between the intellectual ecology of the public domain and the movement that seeks to enclose it through private means. His books include The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind and Shamans, Software, and Spleens: Law and Construction of the Information Society. Additionally, he co-founded both Science Commons and ccLearn to bring the work of Creative Commons to the specific domains of science and education. He is a frequent commentator in the media, notably through his regular FT column. The blog for his most recent book is here.

Henry Jenkins, Provost Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts @ the University of Southern California;

Professor Jenkins moved to USC in 2009 after a decade as the Director of MIT’s influential Comparative Media Studies program. He has written or edited twelve books that examine media, culture and the interplay between creators and consumers, such as Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. He is a highly-respected researcher, receiving grants from the MacArthur Foundation and testifying before the American government. His blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, is available here.

[Aufderheide photo licensed CC BY by (fittingly) Wendy Seltzer; Seltzer photo licensed CC BY-NC-SA by foxgrrl; Jenkins photo licensed CC BY by deneyterrio.]

The Canadian Federation of Students has put together a really great video promoting better copyright policy in Canada. You can learn more about their campaign here.

It’s no secret that academics are an important source of inspiration for Students for Free Culture – after all, our name comes from a book by Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. Since the initial stirrings in 2003, SFC has looked to the research and advocacy of professors from disciplines as diverse as law, media studies and computer science; however, our relationship has always been informal, albeit fruitful.

In the hopes of taking this to the next level, today, we are announcing the first members of our new SFC Faculty Advisory Board. We have reached out to a number of intellectual leaders who will provide guidance and vision for Students for Free Culture through semiannual conversations with the organization. Over the next couple weeks, we will be announcing the members of this group.

In this week’s group, we are joined by some fantastic folks, so without further ado, here are the first four members:

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law @ Harvard Law School; Director, Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics

Professor Lessig has, for more than a decade, been one of the leading thinkers on the intersection of technology and law, especially copyright. He co-founded Harvard’s Berkman Center and Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society. He is the author of Remix (2008), Code v2 (2007), Free Culture (2004),The Future of Ideas(2001) and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999). In recent years, he has shifted his focus to “institutional corruption” in American public life. You can follow his Twitter here.

Michael R. Nelson, Visiting Professor @ Georgetown University’s Communication, Culture and Technology Program

Professor Nelson teaches courses on innovation and Internet policy. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, he was the Director of Internet Technology and Strategy at IBM. Prior to joining IBM in 1998, Professor Nelson was Director for Technology Policy at the Federal Communications Commission, a Special Assistant for IT at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a staff member of the Senate Subcommittee of Science, Technology and Space. Until recently, he served as the Internet Society’s Vice President for Public Policy and recently became Chairman-Elect of the Technology Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Trustee of the Institute for International Communications. You can follow his Twitter here.

Edward Felten, Professor of Computer Science & Public Affairs @ Princeton University; Director, Center for Information Technology Policy

Professor Felten teaches courses at the intersection of computer science and public policy. In addition to publishing widely in fields from encryption to government transparency, he started the popular Freedom to Tinker blog. Professor Felten served as a government witness in United States v. Microsoft and later work revealed that the Sony Rootkit patch made user’s computers more vulnerable to attack. His research, such as into the failures of electronic voting machines or digital rights management, is notable for its real-world applicability.

Gabriella Coleman, Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication @ NYU

Professor Coleman is an anthropologist who studies the ethics of digital collaboration and the role that media and law have in sustaining political activism. She has conducted ethnographic research on hackers in the Debian community and has a forthcoming book entitled “Coding Freedom: Hacker Pleasure and the Ethics of Free and Open Source Software.” Her new research will focus on peer-to-peer patient activism online.

[Felten photo licensed CC-BY by Joseph Lorenzo Hall | Lessig photo licensed CC-BY via Wikimedia]

The SFC election is underway. This Sunday, May 9th at 9 PM EST, we are hosting a public Q/A session in IRC. This is your chance to meet and consult with nominees before voting. Voting tokens will be distributed Monday 10th morning via email.

Details:
Sunday, May 9th at 9 PM EST (GMT -5)
irc.freenode.net
#freeculture

For help with IRC, visit http://wiki.freeculture.org/IRC

To see the nominees for the 2010-2011 board of directors, visit http://wiki.freeculture.org/Board10/Nominations

Our friends at Public Knowledge write to let us know that they have a new job opening that would be a great opportunity for a recently graduated student excited about promoting free culture.

“The Web Content and New Media Associate will work with Public Knowledge (PK) outreach and legal staff to ensure that PK’s website is regularly updated, relevant, timely and widely dispersed through the use of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube). Public Knowledge is a growing, internationally prominent consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. that works to defend citizens’ rights in the emerging digital culture.”

The job is an opportunity to promote free culture through “translating” legal issues into layperson’s terms, generating content for the general public, and assisting in the planning of public events and initiatives (such as their successful World’s Fair Use Day). PK is looking for a college graduate with a passion for technology, public policy, media reform and activism. Candidates should have strong communications skills, be a quick learner and able to produce high-quality results on tight deadlines. Basic web design (HTML/CSS), graphic design, video production, social media, Drupal, and web activism experience is a plus. Compensation is competitive with excellent benefits and opportunities for professional growth.

It’s a great time to be in D.C. so interested candidates should provide a cover letter, resume, and writing sample of less than 1,000 words to Mehan Jayasuriya (mehan [at] publicknowledge [dot] org).

The flyer is available here.

Students for Free Culture is voting on its new board of directors. Nominations have been extended through Friday, April 30.

Head over to the Nominations page to nominate someone you think will help advance the organization in 2010-2011. Candidates must accept nomination and offer biographical details no later than April 30.

Between April 30 and May 10, candidates will answer questions from the community and participate in one live Q/A session.

Chapters will receive e-vote tokens by email on Monday, May 10th, and must cast their votes by Friday, May 14. The results will be announced on Monday, May 17th.

It’s that time of the year again… Nominations for the coming term’s SFC Board of Directors is now open!

Please see the following details about who is eligible to be nominated, how to nominate, and what to do if you are a nominee:

Who is eligible?

In order to be a candidate for the SFC Board, nominees must either be a current member of a SFC chapter or currently serving on the Board, per our Bylaws.

How to nominate someone:

Let the person you are nominating know that you are doing so.  Then, visit the Nominations page to make your nomination official by filling out the nominee’s information using the template provided.

To accept a nomination:

Once your sponsor has added your information to the wiki, you can accept the nomination by updating your bio and statement.  In order for your nomination to be considered accepted, you must write at least “Nomination Accepted” before the close of nominations at Midnight PDT on April 25, 2010.

On campaigning, etc.

Nominees will have until April 25th to add to and finalize their bios and statements on the Nominations page.  The statement is an open forum for information relevant to your candidacy and an opportunity to address questions, thoughts, or concerns from the SFC community to board nominees.

Nominations close at Midnight PDT on April 25th, 2009.

Students interested in technology and information policy will likely be interested in two new opportunities for internships.

1. The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is the Executive Branch’s agency tasked with addressing telecommunications and information policy. Their work has been highlighted in recent months through the Broadband Grants program and the recent speech by Larry Strickling calling for Internet Policy 3.0. They are seeking interns for both the summer and during the school year and if you are interested, get in touch with Christopher Hemmerlein who coordinates their program [chemmerlein (at) ntia (d0t) doc (dot) gov]. Please note that they can only consider American citizens.
2. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is the UN agency that focused on the global IP regime. In recent years, they have been at the center for discussions over copyright exceptions and limitations and the Treaty for the Blind. The new division of economic research at WIPO is offering a couple internships to PhD or otherwise qualified students who are interested in spending 3-6 months in Geneva. Completed applications can be submitted to staff (dot) engagements (at) wipo (dot) int [cc: sasch (dot) wunsch-vincent (at) wipo (dot) int].

These should be great opportunities to learn about the policy work of issues SFC cares about. If you have any other internships ideas, be sure to get in touch.

On the White House blog Tom Kalil and Aneesh Chopra are drawing attention to the role that students have in creating innovative online services that drive America forward. Noting the technologies and services as broad as Mosaic and Google that have come from students, they propose:

“an initiative that would cultivate, with student involvement, such a wave of innovation. Although it’s impossible to predict what the next generation of applications will be, universities, companies, and students could work together under such an initiative, which would serve as a sort of “Petri dish” where new ideas could incubate and grow.”

In our net neutrality FCC filing, the Board of SFC made similar points:

Network neutrality is also important to the United States as it struggles to emerge from the current recession and maintain its position as one of the world’s most innovative economies. The centrality of the Internet to students goes beyond the use of Twitter or MySpace. It even goes beyond the application of technology to learning and scholarship. Students can, and do, play an exciting role in American entrepreneurship. One need look no further than the enormously successful examples of Google and Facebook – innovative companies that came from the creativity and persistence of students who had access to a high-quality, open Internet. A transparent and non-discriminatory network removes barriers to entrepreneurs, be they students or otherwise.

Kalil and Chopra encourage students and others to write to broadband@ostp.gov to suggest ideas for how the broadband grant money should be spent.

What are your ideas for promoting student innovation?