The term is obviously coined by analogy to “environmental justice”, an incredibly powerful idea that succeeds at articulating the costs of environmental degradation. Most simply, environmental justice is the concept that damage to the environment disproportionately affects the most vulnerable human populations. It’s an obvious idea once you think about it: if you’re poor, a child, elderly, disabled, or otherwise disadvantaged, you have fewer resources to cope with (or move away from) environmental perils in your environment. In some sense, it’s an argument against inequality per se (and rightly so), but it also accounts for the fact that some inequality will always exists and helps clarify the burdens that are inequitably distributed.

Culture justice is my attempt to do the same for topics that the free culture movement is concerned with. (The term “information justice” already has some traction, but I prefer a frame that includes access to and participation in culture, not just access to information.) This approach is particularly valuable to the free culture movement (with its roots in elite law schools) and SFC (with its roots at elite colleges).

In his presentation today, Eric Frank of Flat World Knowledge made the argument for open textbooks by pointing out that most of the growth in higher education has come from students with low-SES backgrounds, many of them first-generation college students, attending schools where they pay less than $5,000 in tuition per year. No one clapped. Unfortunately, most of the students in this room are not those students.

SFC’s base has been in the Northeast and West Coast. Although women have had important leadership roles, it’s always been dominated by men. Some panels today couldn’t find a single woman among the five participants. There is a significant place for higher-SES ethnic minorities, such as East Asians and South Asians, there’s a paucity of participation from lower-SES ethnic minorities, such as blacks and Hispanics. Most are training for high-status careers in IT. My point isn’t to smear SFC, but to point out some of its privileges. (I should point out, many of its leaders are acutely aware of them.)

To be fair, white male software engineers and tech enthusiasts have legitimate issues with public policy and dominant institutions. That’s my background in the free culture movement. But its claims will have greater resonance if they’re drawn more broadly. This has been a perpetual aim for SFC.

Culture justice takes this further by attempting to articulate a general framework for the role of social privilege in cultural policy.

One example is re-use of copyrighted material. Less privileged users will have less knowledge of their rights under the law, less ability to negotiate licensing, and in some cases even less protection under the law (see e.g. discussions of gender in fan fiction).

Similarly, Net neutrality is ultimately an argument about privilege and justice.

This is far from an exhaustive list, but it’s enough to make me think that culture justice (under whatever name) could be an important and valuable frame for the free culture movement. Freedom is an important frame, but so is justice. In some cases they may work at cross purposes, but they can also reinforce each other in important ways.

What do you think?

The initial idea was brilliant in its simplicity: get bloggers around the world to write about a female role model in technology. The pledge attracted 1,700 signatures, and more than 500 published posts have been recorded so far.

I’ve had the pleasure to meet and work with a number of outstanding women in technology and information policy, including the young women of Students for Free Culture (such as Elizabeth Stark and Karen Rustad); Laurie Taylor, now acting director of the University of Florida’s Digital Library Center; the remarkable women of SPARC, Heather Joseph and Jennifer McLennan; many others throughout the world of libraries and open access, including Prue Adler, Julia Blixrud, and Karla Hahn of ARL, Donna Okubo of PLoS, Heather Morrison, and others; Heather Ford, formerly of iCommons; and many others. Wendy Seltzer‘s Chilling Effects Clearinghouse inspired me as a tool against Internet censorship and repression. Jessica Litman’s Digital Copyright was a constant companion when I studied the DMCA as an undergrad. I even read danah boyd‘s and Dorothea Salo‘s blogs.

But when I thought of someone to profile, one women stood out in my mind: Gigi Sohn. I think it’d be realistic to call Gigi one of the most important women in American tech policy. Gigi and Public Knowledge have been instrumental in many of the most important legal and political battles of the era, from the successful suit to overturn the broadcast flag to orphan works, Net neutrality, and more. Her hard-nosed approach gets results even as it wins admirers.

So, cheers to Gigi, and to the past, present, and future women of tech. Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

I gave a presentation on Net neutrality on 13 November to the Association of Information Technology Professionals, North Central Florida Chapter in Gainesville, Fla. The slides are available here, largely derived from my earlier presentation at the Florida Media Reform Conference.

The slides aren’t beautiful, but the presentation seemed to be effective. I’d thought a lot about how to present the topic. “Surely the attendees will have heard about Net neutrality before,” I figured, “but they may not know much about what it actually is.” A lot of the public framing of the issue, while effective at getting the public to pay attention, tended to miss the point. Much public discussion would center on who and how the telcos should be able to charge, rather than the (admittedly abstract but fundamental) effect of neutrality as a network design.

By now, everyone in the media reform community is aware of Net neutrality, and most support it, largely due to the issue’s framing and the alignment of groups in the debate. But most, in my estimation, skipped the understanding phase. Unfortunately, Net neutrality isn’t going away as a policy issue, so it’s time to plan for the long haul. It’s time for a deeper level of education, which will allow more people to speak cogently about the issue.

The first time I really got Net neutrality was reading Lessig’s The Future of Ideas, talking about the end-to-end principle. I tried to take a similar approach here.

The slides are available here. Update: Now posted. In addition, the conference was video recorded; if/when the video is posted online, I’ll link to it as well.