Software Freedom Conservancy

Come read our Executive Director @karen literally heartfelt blog post about her personal quest for software freedom on our blog: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/19/a-note-from-karen-2023/

Our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn was quoted extensively in a report by the FTC "Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Creative Economy Staff Report: Perspectives and Takeaways": https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/ftc-staff-report-details-key-takeaways-ai-creative-fields-panel-discussion

You can read more about the report and ongoing work of the FTC here: https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/12/elevating-voices-creative-professionals-report-quote-book

We've almost crossed $50k in our fundraiser! Help us meet our match by donating: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

We're hard at work ensuring your software freedom and digital rights. Just in the past week and a half, we've had major accomplishments:
* We joined an amicus curiae brief in Green v. Department of Justice along with other organizations. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/06/sfc-amicus-curiae-in-dmca-suit/
* We started the December Outreachy round! 59 interns in eleven different countries will start work this week in 21 different FOSS communities. We can’t wait to see all that the interns learn and accomplish.
* Since we first filed comments in the U.S. Copyright Office’s so-called “Artificial Intelligence Study”, we've responded to Microsoft's comments to make sure we stay engaged and represent community over corporate interests. https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/11/response-to-bigtech-arguments-copyright-office/
* In our lawsuit against Vizio, we've filed a we submitted our “Motion for Summary Adjudication”, seeking a pre-trial ruling on two key arguments in the case. First, the motion seeks to establish that distributors of GPL’d and LGPL’d software (such as Vizio) have a legal duty to the recipients of the software to provide the complete, corresponding source code (CCS) upon request. Second, we counter Vizio’s claims that the contractual rights under the GPL Agreements are preempted by copyright law. in our view, third parties (i.e., consumers and users of the devices) do have a right to CCS — even if they are not a copyright holder. A blog post about this is soon to follow!

Continuing our engagement with the Copyright office on AI issues, we've responded to some comments that Big Tech have made. @conservancy continues to show up to defend your rights regarding copyleft licenses.

You can read our rebuttal here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/11/response-to-bigtech-arguments-copyright-office/

In collaboration with many other organizations, @conservancy contributed to an amicus curiae brief in Green v. Department of Justice. Helping bring a software freedom lens to criticizing DMCA §1201, SFC provided our expert opinion on why the DMCA is detrimental to digital rights. You can read the brief and more about the case here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/06/sfc-amicus-curiae-in-dmca-suit/

On this #GivingTuesday, we'd like to highlight some of the work over the past year that your donations and sustaining memberships have supported. Thanks for all your support!

* Our ongoing case against Vizio to protect your rights as third-party beneficiaries of the GPL.

* The 1000th intern to go through the incredible @Outreachy program!

* Ran our first full 4 day conference, with another in the works for July 2024. #FOSSY

* Spoke with policy makers and governments about the importance of FOSS in AI regulation, proprietary software mergers and submitted comments to NIST and the FTC.

* Got involved with the Right to Repair movement, specifically so we can highlight the needs of Software Right to Repair.

You can read more and donate here: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/#YearInReview

Thanks to the @sourceware PLC for their kind words of support for @conservancy https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/nov/27/sourceware-thanks-conservancy/
Their piece talks about the 6 month anniversary of joining SFC, their roadmap for the future and why you should support our fundraiser. Thanks to them for the incredible efforts they've made over 25 years of hosting free software infrastructure, and being an incredible example of a community lead project.

Happy Thanksgiving! We're so thankful that only two days into our fundraiser and we've already raised over $13,000. We're almost to 10% of our $161,729.
Renewing your Sustainership early encourages new donors, so help us make a big push! https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/

And for more information about our fundraiser you can see our announcement page here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/nov/21/2023-fundraiser/

It's time for the annual Software Freedom Conservancy fundraising match drive! This years match challenge is over $160,000, so please donate to help us start strong! Help us make our full match by donating before January 15th, you can read more about the fundraiser and what we've been up to on our website: https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/#YearInReview

Our Director of Compliance has blogged about he watched it and some thoughts as well: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/oct/12/how-i-watched-motion-summary-judgment-hearing/

The transcript from the summary judgement hearing in our Vizio lawsuit has just been published. You can read about it here: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/oct/12/transcript-msj-hearing/

Question: What kind of insight do you feel like you have now into how your work or likeness is being used by generative AI systems, and what kind of transparency do you feel is needed?
Bradley: "...there is now no question that the body of copylefted FOSS is a huge part of the software-assisted development machine learning systems."
"...there is no reason that Big Tech shouldn't be regulated to make these systems transparent — end to end."
"...the public should have access to the input set, have access to the source code of the software that does the training and generation, and most importantly, access to the source code that does these forms of back-end exclusion..."

Bradley's opening remarks: "I avoid using any proprietary software, but in this case, it is not merely esoteric principle"
"...every consumer deserves the right to examine how their software works, to modify, improve and change it — be it altruistically or commercially."
"For 30 years, our community has created FOSS and made it publicly available. Big Tech, for its part, continues to refuse to share most of its own software in the same way."
"Big Tech claims that the rules, licensing, and legislation that has applied to creative works since the 1800s in the United States are suddenly moot simply because machine learning is, in their view, too important to be bogged down by the licensing choices of human creators of works."

Opening remarks from other panelists include thoughts about how to protect the labor and works of creative and other content creators, the need for public policy, and a refocus of the conversation on those affected by, not creating the generative systems.

As the FTC panel begins https://kvgo.com/ftc/Creative-Economy-and-Generative-AI-October-4-2023 we heard from FTC Commission Slaughter: "... copyright is not the only tool." to protect our labor and works.

Be sure to tune into the FTC panel about “Creative Economy and Generative AI” featuring @conservancy Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn at 19:00 UTC
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/oct/04/ftc-ai-panel/

Our Policy Fellow Bradley M. Kuhn will be on the FTC round table discussion "Creative Economy and Generative AI" tomorrow. He's joining a panel of artists, policy makers, union organizers and other activists as the one to represent the FOSS and greater software communities. You can watch the webcast at 19:00 UTC: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2023/10/creative-economy-generative-ai