'Free Culture' site a news source for copyright watchdogs

The current system of copyright laws is "inherently anti-democratic" with its "copyright nobility," said Nelson Pavlosky, co-founder of Free Culture, a student organization trying to ensure that culture and its creation remain uninhibited by copyright laws.

In an effort to "democratize creativity and innovation," Free Culture is raising awareness about copyright legislation as well as attempting to affect it, Pavlosky said.

FreeCulture's news blog is an active force in uniting the nine national chapters of the organization, Pavlosky said. The blog features news about copyright law and about the different chapters' activities.

The organization strives for a participatory culture where everyone is free to contribute, Pavlosky said. Free Culture is building the tools to allow people to get their voices out there, he added.

After hearing a talk by Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture was established at Swarthmore College in October 2003 and was named after Lessig’s book Free Culture.

A free culture is the opposite of a "permission culture" where an individual would have to ask copyright owners for permission to create—a potentially real situation, Pavlosky said.

The problem occurs, according to Pavlosky, when existing copyright protections stifle creativity because companies, in particular, buy enough copyrights to essentially establish a monopoly on a certain idea, thus hindering its development, he explained.

Although Pavlosky said that the organization still needs more national centralization, the news blog allows events to be publicized throughout the Free Culture network and sometimes leads to national campaigns based on local issues. The Cereal Solidarity campaign is one example of the ‘local to global’ possibilities of the news blog.

The blog "brings people and issues down to earth," Pavlosky said. It keeps people on the same page and helps get more people interested in joining.

"Apathy really makes me angry," he continued. "The biggest cause of apathy is that no one has a stake—they don’t care. If people feel they have no power to change things, why bother?"

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