---

BY TALLY SHARMA

In print | Published April 27, 2006

Correction Appended

While last week saw the arrival and departure of hundreds of prospective students as part of Ride the Tide, the first annual Free Culture summit also contributed to the hubbub.

Founded in 2003, Free Culture Swarthmore is best known for winning a lawsuit against Diebold Election Systems. Since then, the group has steadily been gaining support from students and professors across multiple parts of the country. With chapters established at over 30 different colleges after its start at Swarthmore, Free Culture is just now celebrating its second birthday this month.

Alex Benn ’08, a principal member of Free Culture, explained the importance that FCS saw in hosting a large-scale event this past weekend. “There were two purposes,” he said. “One was to get all the members of the various Free Culture chapters of the east coast to interact with each other; the other was to also introduce more people to the Free Culture movement.”

Luke Smith ‘06, a founder of FCS, agreed that the goal of the summit was to bring students involved in the movement together. "The goal was to get people from around the continent to see each other’s faces," he said. “Before now we’ve been communicating through e-mail.”

Among the represented colleges at the summit were the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, MIT, Scripps, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Rutgers University.

According to Smith, about 60 major attendees came to the events that spanned from April 21 to April 23. Nelson Pavlosky ’06, another founder of FCS, said he was pleased with the turnout. “We had a lot of new people at the event — a lot of new converts,” he said.

Friday’s schedule included informational presentations on how to further publicize the Free Culture movement and its ideals. Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, author of “Free Culture,” gave a lecture. Lessig was joined by Peter Decherney, a University of Pennsylvania English and Cinema Studies professor. Pavlosky also spoke to conference attendees on the Free Culture movement as a whole. The talks were followed by a question and answer session.

Benn said that while Friday was designated for enrichment and education about Free Culture, Saturday chiefly focused on planning and strategizing. “We concentrated more on how to take the next step and less on introducing people to the topics [on Saturday],” he said.

Smith agreed that summit planners wanted last weekend’s events to really mobilize current activists. “This time it was no longer of value to pack people into a room like it was when Lessig first came to speak,” he said. “We’re all activists now.”

Among the activities on Saturday were additional lectures and workshops sponsored by numerous visitors, all held in Hicks. Some of these guests included Alex Curtis from Public Knowledge, Derek Slater of the Electric Frontier Foundation, Holmes Wilson of Downhill Battle and Hannah Sassaman from Prometheus Radio.

Events were scheduled into the night, as well. On Friday, FCS hosted its “Pirate Parrrty,” while a full-scale LAN party was held on Saturday. In addition, Smith and a Harvard Law student provided their own entertainment with their remarkable skill of Polynesian fire twirling.

According to Pavlosky, one of the few disappointments with the summit was the fact that so few people from the local area attended. “There weren’t many people from Swarthmore,” he said.

Benn agreed that a future aim of FCS will be to draw people from the Swarthmore community. “We’ve always had a little trouble getting Swarthmore people involved because it’s such a complicated topic,” he said. “Next semester, we’re going to try to get our friends and acquaintances to see why Free Culture is so important.”

Benn said that FCS already had tentative plans for the future. “Next semester, we’re going to try to have several web comic artists visit campus,” he said. “They can discuss how they take something that they give away for free, and still make money off of it.”

By and large, Pavlosky judged the Free Culture Summit to be a success. “A lot of the organizations that were at the summit didn’t exist a few years ago,” he said. “The fact that we could bring people together from all over into a room and talk about it was really good. Even two years ago this wouldn’t have been possible.”

Correction: Apr. 27, 2006:

This is the first annual Free Culture summit, not the third. Also, Free Culture is celebrating its second birthday this month, not its third.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »