I've changed my mind about the topic for the First-Year Tutorial that I'll be teaching next fall. Today was the deadline for turning in the brief description that will be sent to incoming students. Here's what I submitted:
Free software, free culture
Recent developments in copyright law and mechanisms for controlling the production and distribution of creative works impose socially counterproductive constraints on artists and innovators, impeding the evolution of new forms and styles, squandering the opportunity for cultural development and exchange that digital technology provides, and reserving to media corporations the freedom to guide, shape, and contribute to popular culture. We shall explore legal ways to oppose these trends, beginning with techniques developed over the last twenty years by the Free Software movement, techniques that take advantage of copyright law to protect the free development and exchange of computer software.
...
...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike License.
created May 1, 2006
last revised May 13, 2006