Lawrence Lessig is a professor of law at Stanford University. He chairs the Creative Commons Project and is on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for the Public Domain. He has also written three books about culture, technology, and the laws that tend to mess them up. In short, he has done many things to try and keep our culture from being owned by giant media companies. There is a flash movie/presentation thing available that I think everyone who is interested in the creation of culture and technology should see. The audio of the flash movie is Lessig giving a talk at the 2002 O’Reilly Open Source Convention. The video of the flash movie is a recreation of the slides that he showed during the talk. The state of patents and over-zealous copyrights is something that I am very concerned about. Really, I think it is something that everyone has a vested interest in (it is our culture after all). So, take ten minutes and watch the flash movie. Some more information and material relating to the talk is also available.

So, instead of just telling people how much I like the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and what they’re doing, I decided I should actually do something to help. So, I just donated $100 to the EFF. Now I actually feel like I’m part of the solution. It’s not enough to just sit around and rely on other people to take care of things that are important to you.