ISOC-NY is a member of the Free Culture Alliance NYC, an informal umbrella group of organizations in the New York City area with an interest in the Free Culture movement, Open Education, and related developments at the boundaries of technology, culture, community, and the commons. Other members include Wikimedia NYC, NYU Free Culture, and Creative Commons. Tomorrow, Tuesday evening May 7 2013, there will be a social at Common Ground in Manhattan’s East Village. All ISOC-NY members are invited to attend. You can register via our meetup page.
The 2013 Students for Free Culture Conference will take place on April 20th and 21st, 2013 at New York Law School. Through panels and keynote speakers, FCX2013 will focus on current issues in intellectual property law, open access to educational resources, maker culture, and technology policy. Through workshops, the conference will revisit the core pillars of the free culture movement, examine the success stories from our movement, and identify new ways in which Students for Free Culture can advocate for a more free, open, and participatory digital environment. Admission is free. ISOC-NY will provide streaming via the Internet Society Chapters Webcasting Channel.
The celebration will be led by Wikimedians and Free Culture Alliance NYC, with DIY fair pavilions (bamboo poles to be provided!) for numerous represented Wikiverse and Free Culture initiatives.
The OpenCourseWare Consortium has organized the first annual Open Education Week which will happen this week March 5-10, 2012. Open Education Week is a global event that seeks to raise awareness about the benefits of free and open sharing in education, especially Open Educational Resources (OER). OER are high-quality, free and open educational materials that offer opportunities for people anywhere in the world to share, use and reuse.
The event will take place online and in different locations around the world, with opportunities to participate in webinars, discussions and live events. Projects and events will be featured from institutions and organizations from around the world, including: University of Cape Town, University of Michigan, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, University of California, Irvine, Delft University of Technology, and Creative Commons. Participation is free and open to all.
On October 19 2011 the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee (ICAC) celebrated the 15th anniversary of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (HR 1555), an addendum to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was Section 230 that introduced the rule of “safe harbor” for Internet Providers. The Q&A involves some high level discussion of the current state of Internet freedom. Video
A short video Cory Doctorow recorded for The Guardian called “Every Pirate Wants to Be an Admiral,” in which he lays out the case for a less-restrictive copyright as better for culture.
The report [pdf] “explores key trends and challenges to the right of all individuals to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds through the Internet”. It covers both content and access, and also examines what “exceptional circumstances under which the dissemination of certain types of information may be restricted”.
The report states:
States restrict, control, manipulate and censor content disseminated via the Internet without any legal basis, or on the basis of broad and ambiguous laws, without justifying the purpose of such actions; and/or in a manner that is clearly unnecessary and/or disproportionate to achieving the intended aim
and
The Special Rapporteur is of the view that the arbitrary use of criminal law to sanction legitimate expression constitutes one of the gravest forms of restriction to the right, as it not only creates a “chilling effect”, but also leads to other human rights violations, such as arbitrary detention and torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Noting recent cases of imprisonment of bloggers, the report suggests that defamation be decriminalized globally and that only incitements to violence can be legitimately blocked. Additionally
the Special Rapporteur reiterates that the right to freedom of expression includes expression of views and opinions that offend, shock or disturb.
The report criticizes heavy-handed copyright protection schemes while noting that the most recent drafts of the ACTA agreement have dropped the ‘3 strike’ disconnection provisions.
It calls for universal access noting that a BBC global poll in March 2010 “79% of those interviewed
in 26 countries believe that Internet access is a fundamental human right”
The study found that Estonia had the greatest degree of internet freedom among the countries examined, while the United States ranked second. Iran received the lowest score in the analysis. Eleven other countries received a ranking of Not Free, including Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. A number of important countries are seen as particularly vulnerable to deterioration in the coming 12 months: Jordan, Russia, Thailand, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.
As part of an NPR series on recording formats, a story on mp3 – including an excellent interview with “father of mp3” Karlheinz Brandenburg – yields the full tale of the rise of the format, how it escaped its parents, and became the lingua franca of Internet audio.
from the story:
“We tried to tell the people from music industry early on, and we tried to discuss possibilities how to react to this … The idea was that the music industry wouldn’t just be able to go on, they would have to adapt to the situation as well, and if we now look back these 15 years we have to say they finally did but it was too slow and some strategic errors in there.”
(Another group was convened in 1999 and 2000 to define methods for “secure, legal distribution of music over the Internet,” Brandenburg says.)
“My advice was that they should shoot for a technical standard to get interoperability for all these upcoming services and MP3 players, music players and so on.
“And … that hasn’t changed, very clearly if we don’t reach interoperability for a secured format, then the only surviving format will be format without copy protection and that is what happened in the end.”
On Sunday January 14, 2018 Wikimedia NYC will celebrate Wikipedia’s 17th Birthday with its annual Wikipedia Day Conference, supported by the Free Culture Alliance NYC (including ISOC-NY). This year’s event will again be at the Ace Hotel NYC,and include topics such as Wikidata, Education & Editathons, Lightning Talks, etc. etc. Attendance is free. Food will be provided. There will also be a webcast via the Internet Society Livestream Channel and the ISOC-NY Facebook Page.
Mansoor Ahmed are discussing. 
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