Thanks to Larry for having us, and thanks to you readers for coming to hear a bit about us. Your feedback is well appreciated.

Keep in touch: subscribe to our announcements mailing list and swing by our blog from time to time. Feel free to join the discussion as well. Snag one of our T-shirts, and give a listen to Creative Common’s birthday gift to us.

We’re young and busy: we need all the guidance and help we can get. Please help us decide our priorities, form policies and strategies, do outreach, maintain our Web site and communication channels… basically, there’s a lot to do: will you help? Remember Lessig’s speech at OSCON 2002: “What have you done about it?” If you think there’s something at stake with culture, technology, and media — if you’re looking for a way to get involved — we have nails that need hammering.

If you can help with the Web site, with research and writing, with creating graphics and other media, or with any of a hundred other tasks, drop us a line at [email protected] and let us know.

If you want to start a Free Culture group in your own corner of the world, e-mail us at [email protected] and let us know how we can help.

We hope you’ve gotten a glimpse of what we’re about and how we roll over at FC.o. Thanks for lending us an ear. See you around!

I’m writing from an Internet café in Montréal, Québec, where I’m travelling and taking French at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Besides the observations that naturally arise from contact with a foreign country and culture, I’ve also had the chance to meet some of Canada’s leaders in the free culture movement, about which I’ve written previously on the Free Culture blog (“Dispatch from the True North, Strong and Free”, “Vive la Culture Libre”).

FreeCulture.org calls itself “an international student movement,” but the claim is a bit tenuous: All our campus groups are based in the U.S., the organization is registered with a U.S. address, and most of our volunteers are in the U.S. This is not to minimize the role people outside the U.S. have played in building FC.o, nor our friends overseas, some of whom have said they’d like to plant the group in their countries — but we’re heavily American, and rather U.S.-centric.

FC.o has a long way to go in terms of the resources we can offer new start-ups, and even further when there’s a national, cultural, or language barrier to overcome. Canada, though, makes an appealing prospect for the second national Free Culture group, due to the long-standing ties between the two countries. When I return to the States, I’ll be taking some time to reach out to students in Canada interested in our work.

The question remains, however: What do we do when we get there? For instance, how should the presence of international groups affect our decision-making process? Should Canadians have a “vote,” so to speak, when determining American policy, and vice-versa? Can we divorce national and international affairs, and leave each country to pursue their own interests, while keeping a united front on international policies? Put simply, to what degree should the fates of groups in different countries be tied?

More generally, what does it mean to be “international” in the free culture arena?

What are the differences between the legal and cultural climate in the U.S. and other parts of the world? If individual issues translate differently across borders, how can we phrase an underlying philosophy that makes sense? Where do we look to find students and volunteers who are interested and knowledgeable about the issues? What can we do to lend assistance where it’s needed?

I believe that international cooperation is neccesary to address some of the problems in copyright, in particular: I’m no expert, but I get the impression that many of its uglier facets are set in stone via international treaties (e.g. WIPO) or come as pre-requisites for foreign aid. But much of free culture, per se, is distinctly national, regional, or local — so a “flexible federalism” with a coherent but open-ended philsophy is neccesary. Or am I wrong?

What do we need to know to operate across borders and in the international sphere? What structures do we need to do so? What differences should we expect? And how do we plant new local presences in unfamiliar soil?