[FC-discuss] [FC-Discuss] Universities and free content

[Nelson Pavlosky]

At one point in the distant past, we had a conference call with the EFF, 
Downhill Battle, etc. about putting together a list of ideal university 
policies and then comparing actual university policies to those ideal 
policies.  I believed this stalled because nobody wanted to write up the 
ideal policies.  Perhaps simply finding out what the existing policies 
are would remove this roadblock, and once we know what sorts of policies 
are out there, then maybe we might want to consider writing "model" 
policies (with the help of EFF etc.) and start pushing our universities 
to adopt them.

At any rate, this investigative "positive" work should definitely come 
before any prescriptive normative work, i.e. let's find out what's out 
there before we decide how things ought to be and try to make changes, 
but we shouldn't forget about that second step.

Peace,
~Nelson~

Asheesh Laroia wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Fred Benenson wrote:
>
>   
>> 1) Student copyright policy
>>  What rights do students have to their work? Moreover, are they allowed to
>> freely license it?
>>
>> 2) p2p filesharing policy
>>   How willing is the university to play ball with RIAA's extortionist
>> tactics? Do they readily give up student information, or ban the student
>> from the network? 3 strikes? 1 strike? Do they offer services to students
>> who are sued? What is the party line about the copious amounts of file
>> sharing that is obviously going on on their campuses?
>>
>> 3) Privacy / Free Speech stuff
>>  Is running Tor legal? Can you protest easily?
>>
>> 4) Open Access
>>  How receptive are the librarians / academics to open access publishing?
>> This is a hard thing to quantify, but perhaps you guys have some better
>> ideas.
>>     
>
> 5) Network freedom
>
> How possible is it for students to run their own servers on their 
> computers attached to the institutional net?  Is the network designed to 
> block that?  Is there policy against it?
>
> Do the networks block some IP addresses or some ports from inbound or 
> outbound access?  (e.g., Johns Hopkins blocks any access to the IP address 
> of some major bittorrent trackers.)
>
> I believe it is a Free Culture issue because so many of the major 
> innovations (especially those that have come at odds with the copyright 
> industry) have emerged from college dorms.  Furthermore, this is a crucial 
> part of a participatory Internet rather than a network that lets you 
> download but not offer content for download by others.  By all means, you 
> don't have to do all of this big, difficult question (although hopefully 
> with help, we can map this), so consider this my suggestion.
>
> By no means do I think that, if I contribute no work to what is already 
> set to be a useful, exciting project, I get to pick what questions you 
> guys ask. (-:
>
> -- Asheesh.
>
> --
> "Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
> science fiction..."
>   		-- Art Spiegelman
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