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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