Victoria Espinel, the Obama administration’s intellectual property enforcement coordinator (“IP Czar”) is undertaking a serious review of American intellectual property enforcement policy. To her credit, she is asking for public input on how they should approach their task, though much of the document makes erroneous assumptions about the need for “enhanced enforcement” and the unmitigated “harms to the American economy” from intellectual property infringement. The economic reality that too much intellectual property actually harms the American economy is not present in the request for public information, making our job and input even more important.

The input should take two parts:

In the first, the IPEC seeks written submissions from the public regarding the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from intellectual property violations, and the threats to public health and safety created by infringement. In the second part, the IPEC requests detailed recommendations from the public regarding the objectives and content of the Joint Strategic Plan and other specific recommendations for improving the Government’s intellectual property enforcement efforts. Responses to this request for comments may be directed to either of these two parts, or both, and may include a response to one or more requests for information found in either part.

Submissions are due on or before Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 5 p.m. and should be directed to intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov.

In the meantime, what topics and approaches should we, as a community, cover?

[Via BoingBoing]

Adi Kamdar, the President of Yale Students for Free Culture, was recently featured on the BBC for a story about Yale’s switch to Google Apps for services such as GMail. The change to cloud computing, especially at the education level, raises important questions about autonomy, privacy and functionality. Adi and his chapter have been raising public awareness through venues such as an opinion piece in the student newspaper:

And for all the benefits of Gmail, there are some very real concerns. As students, we need to know that Yale has signed a contract with Google guaranteeing certain provisions. Right now, the transition to Gmail depends on Google’s generosity to provide this service without cost or advertisements. If Google decides to charge in the future, what are the ramifications for Yale? We have not heard how much control, if any, ITS and the University will have over backups, data security and migration. We don’t know where the Gmail servers will be located and what privacy protections legally apply in that jurisdiction. At Brown, for instance, mail can be stored in “datacenters outside the borders of the United States” according to the university’s Web site. In addition, no one has told us how much access Google and its data mining algorithms will have to Yale e-mail. Even if Google and ITS do have all the answers, we are entitled to at least ask the questions.

To listen to the BBC piece on the topic, check out their site within the next week or Adi’s blog.

On February 25th, 2010, Lawrence Lessig will deliver a talk on fair use and politics in online video from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. Open Video Alliance and the Harvard Berkman Center are teaming up to provide a live webcast—you can tune in at http://openvideoalliance.org/lessig, or attend in person at one of many screening events. For free culture chapters, it is a great opportunity to bring your group together—check out the list of screenings or arrange your own.

Use this as an opportunity to convene a discussion, or start a workshop, or get your group off the ground!

Lessig’s talk will explore copyright in a digital age, and the importance of a doctrine like fair use. Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, and is essential for commentary, criticism, news reporting, remix, research, teaching and scholarship with video. As a medium, online video will be most powerful when it is fluid, like a conversation. Like the rest of the internet, online video must be designed to encourage creative expression and political participation, not just passive consumption.

If you want to host your own screening, fill out the form at http://openvideoalliance.org/event/lessig-registration/. Small grants are available to pay facilities fees, refreshments, or materials. If you have questions or comments, or if you’d like to get more information about hosting your own event, you can contact the event organizers at conference@openvideoalliance.org.

Free Culture X is only two weeks away. If you have not yet registered, now is the time to do it! Register now!

Give a dollar, $25, $100—it’s up to you. 100% of the proceeds will fund future Students for Free Culture projects. To sweeten the deal for you, we’re announcing some cool gifts:

•If you register at $50 or more, get a DVD with the complete Free Culture 2008 videos archive

•If you register at $75 or more, get a signed copy of one of these books:

• Remix by Lawrence Lessig OR
• Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins

•If you register at $100 or more, get one of these badges of coolness:

• a yourname@freeculture.org email address OR
• a custom answering machine greeting by none other than cyberscholar Jonathan Zittrain

Just register by February 9th at your chosen level and we’ll contact you to get your gift preferences. Gifts are cumulative, so if you register at $100 or more you get a DVD, a signed book, and a badge of coolness. Gifts apply to all previous registrations, too.

Questions? Email board@freeculture.org.

ARPAnet Interface message processor (IMP), BBN, 1967

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering adopting national rules to protect the open Internet. On January 13, the FCC is hosting a public workshop at MIT that will include some of the founders of the Internet alongside entrepreneurs, technologists, and policymakers (see agenda and panelist bios below).

On one hand, the workshop is an opportunity for community members to hear experts discuss the features of the Open Internet that are important to preserve.

But much more crucially, this workshop is an opportunity to enter your questions, thoughts, concerns, and suggestions into the public record. The FCC will use this information in its decision-making process. Your contributions to this workshop will have have a significant impact on the course of action that the FCC ultimately takes.

Think about it: how does the Internet’s openness affects your ability to work, study, create, and communicate? On what network features do you rely? What have you done with it? What do you hope to do in the future?

There is no doubt that large corporations (like the newly-merged Comcast/NBC Universal) have organized lobbyists to register their interests. Free culture is not their priority.

Who will lobby on behalf of the student, the fan, the hacker, the gamer, and the entrepreneur?

The FCC needs to hear your voice.

Innovation, Investment, and the Open Internet

• January 13th, 2010
• 4:30 pm EST
• MIT Media Lab, Bartos Theater
• Streaming: http://www.openinternet.gov/workshops
• Agenda/ bios: http://wiki.freeculture.org/FCC_Workshop_January_13

If you are local to Boston, please come in person. If you can’t make it at 4:30, it is OK to come late. Simply showing up is a powerful demonstration of the concern that exists among everyday internet users.

Public Knowledge is hosting World’s Fair Use Day at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on January 12th.

World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) is a free, all-day celebration of the doctrine of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials.

The event has a great line-up of artists, policymakers, and pundits including:

• Representative Mike Doyle (PA 14th)
• Dan Walsh of ‘Garfield minus Garfield’
• Marc Hosler of Negativland
• DJ Earworm
• Mike Masnick of Techdirt
• Brett Gaylor of ‘RIP: A Remix Manifesto’
• Nina Paley of ‘Sita Sings the Blues’
• Chris Burke, a machinima artist
• Eliza Kreisinger, a mash-up artist
• Jonathan McIntosh, a mash-up artist

If you can’t make it to the free event, it will be webcast; it looks great, so we encourage you to check it out!

Free Culture X is coming up very quickly and we’re working hard to finalize the preparations for the event held at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. on February 13-14th. As you know, on the first day, Jonathan Zittrain will be giving the keynote address and there will be panels on open educational resources, open access and access to knowledge, campus technology policy, and university patent policy.

In the meantime, students interested in attending should investigate travel funding from their universities. The SFC Board is working hard to secure donations, but we need your help. Most schools provide money to registered student groups and many departments have discretionary funds to support educational opportunities for students. Look around and apply early because these things can take time; and don’t hesitate to contact the Board if we can provide any documentation to help!

Secondly, to make this a success, we’ll need volunteers to help with both pre-conference and during the event. We have set-up a mailing list to coordinate planning and encourage you to sign up for it here.

Finally, we would like to hear ideas for the second day’s workshops. If you have ideas, send them out to the FC X mailing list or add them to the call for workshop proposals and we’ll collect them.

The following is a guest post from Nick Shockey of SPARC.

Last Wednesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Request for Information on the issue of Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research. Executive action stemming from this RFI could potentially open all federally funded science research to the public for free online access.

This has the exciting potential to greatly advance the goals of your Open Education Campaign. Not only could the more than $60 billion in research the US government funds annually be made available to all, but the government would also be endorsing openness as an academic ideal, sending a strong signal to publishers, universities, and various other stakeholders that this is the new standard.

With all the work Students for Free Culture has done on the issue of expanding access to educational materials, you are in a unique position to appreciate the tremendous impact executive action could have. Opening up all federally funded research to every student in the country (and world) would break down strong barriers to access that currently force students to settle for the materials their library can afford rather than what they truly need. A student’s education should be limited only by curiosity rather than the rapidly escalating journal prices that put the complete scholarly record out of reach for students at all but the most well funded institutions.

So what can you do to make public access a reality? The answer is that you can do a lot.

• First, you can take the time to respond to the questions in the RFI (the full text can be found at here) by submitting a comment to the Federal Register by January 7th (email comments to publicaccess-at-ostp-dot-gov).
• Second, there is a rotating set of questions on the Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog which changes every ten days – you can respond thoughtfully to the questions as well as other people’s comments right in the comment section of the blog (the first round ends December 20th, so don’t wait!).
• Finally, you can encourage other students and advocates to comment as well.

A strong student response in favor of a mandatory public access policy will truly help ensure that such a policy becomes a reality and that it follows SFC’s ideals of openness as closely as possible. I can’t wait to see the impact students make on this groundbreaking process and look forward to your responses!

Nick Shockey
Director of Student Advocacy, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

Whether it be improving one’s own health, finding more efficient fuels or better understanding far-flung parts of the world, access to scholarship is essential to improving our society. Too often, though, that knowledge is locked behind pay-walls that place it out of the reach of most of the world’s population.

In an effort to make academic publications more accessible, AcaWiki has been created. Billing itself as the “Wikipedia for academic research,” AcaWiki allows scholars to post summaries of their work on a site that aims to foster discussions. This is a great way to help build the academic commons. So, if you’re a researcher or academic, consider posting summaries of your work. If you’re a student, turn to AcaWiki when researching.

The next Students for Free Culture conference is February 13-14. That’s sooner than you think—and it’s never too early to start planning.

If you’re a student leader, now is the time to seek travel funding from your schools and departments. You’d be surprised to learn how much support is available for you to represent your school at an international conference. Consult with your professors, counselors, and department heads to find out about grant opportunities.

We will be working hard to secure travel funding for representatives from SFC chapters to attend the conference. But we can’t guarantee funding, so ask around! Contact us if you need an invitation letter or any other support.

If you’re interested in volunteering, we now have a collaborative mailing list. We’ll use the list in the day-to-day coordination of the conference, up to and after the event. Sign up here.

Stay tuned for more updates. To stay in touch, consider following us on Twitter/identi.ca or subscribing to our RSS feed.