Putting My Money Where My (Big) Mouth Is…

I decided today to become an official member of both the EFF and the ACLU and to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak.  As I’ve stated many times in this blog, I’m an avid supporter of free expression and free culture, and I believe that it would be remiss of me to not offer financial support to two of the biggest organizations that are fighting for those rights.

Of course, being an underpaid graduate TA doesn’t give me much financial wiggle room, so I won’t be able to donate regularly until I’m a little more financially secure.  Until then, I’ll continue to use this blog as a platform for free expression and free culture.

A Small Victory in the Fight Against Illegal Surveillance

The EFF secured a minor victory last week in Congress with the passing of a new surveillance bill that does not grant retroactive immunity to telecoms who participated in the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping.  Of course, the bill still needs to go through the Senate, and veto-happy Bush has sworn that any bill that doesn’t grant immunity will not cross his desk.  Read the rest of the article here.

Free Culture

A colleague here at the University of Illinois pointed me in the direction of this presentation by Lawrence Lessig (professor at Stanford Law) from the 2002 Open Source Conference (OSCON).  In this presentation, Lessig makes the same arguments I’ve been trying to make on this website regarding intellectual property, copyright law, and the advancement of culture.

One of his most interesting points here relates to the hypocrisy of some of the corporations that are the most dogged defenders of copyright and intellectual property law.  Lessig calls out the Walt Disney Corporation, Microsoft, and various politicians and lobbyists in the presentation.  The picture he paints is one of corporate greed and a consolidated attempt by small groups of wealthy people to maintain a stranglehold on cultural and technological advancement in order to amass more wealth for themselves.  In my opinion, this is the ultimate perversion of capitalism and the “free” market economy.

In my Blogroll, I’ve included a link to Lessig’s original presentation (including an audio recording, a flash version of his powerpoint presentation, a full transcript, and various other goodies) as well as a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which is a group dedicated to the protection of freedom of expression and culture in the information age.  I encourage everyone to read more about this issue and form your own opinion.