The Empowermentors Collective is a skillshare, activism, and discussion network for intersectionally marginalized people of color (for example people of color with disabilities, trans* people of color, queer people of color, and women of color) within the free culture and free software movement.



After taking an availability poll with our current active participants, our first meeting is scheduled for Sunday, March 24th at 12:00 pm eastern time in the #empowermentors IRC channel on Freenode (weblink). Also, please join us at this year's LibrePlanet conference for a casual dinner meetup!

Our first meeting will provide a space for everyone to get to know one another; share announcements, projects, and events of interest; and discuss the activities and direction of the collective.

Current meeting agenda items:

• Introductions
• Personal plugs, announcements, events and projects to share
• Open vs closed email list/IRC channel
• Email list or other space for allies
• Need for website/blog?
• Established activities:
• Videos to transcribe
• Software bugs
• New activities:
• Alternative tech terms list (to "crippleware", "master/slave", "male/female plugs", etc)
• Your idea here!

We provide a space to:

• Meet and talk to people with a common interest and shared experiences in free culture and free software.
• Develop and share our skills and knowledge around free software and free culture.
• Identify, expose, and organize to confront issues of oppression within the free software and free culture communities.
• Expand our own philosophy at the cutting-edge of feminist, queer, critical race, and cyborg theory.

This opens up greater potential to:

• Form coalitions with other causes of importance to us.
• Create a free culture and free software movement that fights for us.
• Bridge the free culture and free software movement with our contemporaries in the critical intersectional analysis of oppression, hierarchy, and domination.

John wished they were going to her apartment so she would lead the way, and he would have had a few moments to take in her figure. John loved watching some of the apornstories.com erotic movies, and he loved women with great figures. He had been trying hard to see her figure all through the night, but it was rather hard to make it out in the dark movie theater and the car, although the seatbelt had been snuggled between her big tits the entire ride.

John fiddled with his apartment keys, pretending to look for the right one while using that time to stare at her waist. Her tight jeans looked like a second skin against her voluptuous hips. She glanced up, biting her lip, nervously waiting for him. John’s moral fibers enraged all the other fibers in his masculine body, and he asked, “Are you sure you are willing to come in? If you are having 2nd thoughts, we can schedule dinner for later this week. After dinner, we can watch some sex movies…”. Scarlet interrupted him, shaking her head, “I want to see your apartment. I’ve been imagining what the place is like and trying to imagine where you were when we were messaging back and forth. I am too curious to go back now.”

They both stepped into the apartment, and, as John closed the door, he asked, “Is it anything near what you imagined? And we should do your place next, so I too can imagine you sitting around your house in a little, lacy negligee.” Walking into the living room, Scarlet turned around to tease him, “A negligee? That sounds fancy and complicated. I walk around naked.”

They exchanged a naughty look, and John closed the few steps between them and slid his hand around her hips, pulling her hot body against his. It was as if a physical magnetism was bonding them together. He slipped his other hand into her hair and said in a low tone, “Please, do feel free to walk around naked here.”. That comment was almost lost on her as John leaned in and gently placed his eager lips against hers. Scarlet tasted salty from the popcorn they had eaten on the date, and her luscious lips pressed softly against his mouth. Scarlet pressed her hot, yearning body closer, her hands slowly moving around John to rest against his back.

His hands were combing through the silky locks as her juicy mouth offered a hot enticement of what else she had to offer. Scarlet overtook his senses, and he felt his erection respond with growing excitement. He tore both his mouth and body from her, carrying her into the bedroom. Scarlet pulled her shirt up and over her head and began sliding out of her tight jeans. John was unbuttoning his shirt, although now he stood still. Scarlet had accidentally slid a motorcycle magazine off the nightstand, revealing what had been hidden underneath. Underneath the motorcycle magazines were various XXX erotic movies and a Playboy porn magazine. John held his breath as she glanced over and gasped at the magazine. It was flipped open to a dirty page with a promotion of a few erotic adult movies, which showed a well-endowed blond in small scraps of black material. He waited while Scarlet picked up the dirty XXX magazine and looked closer. The blond’s legs were spread, her knees were well tied to her arms, and her wrists were well connected to the bed. Scarlet flipped through the magazine, glancing over some XXX pictures and erotic films. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Are you, Have you… Are you into this? Do you like these free porno movies?”

She asked, “Is this something you are… were going to want me to do eventually?” John tried to reason with her, “We have not had sex yet, and we do not know where the relationship is going. Please, do put down the magazine and forget it. For now, I do not want to ruin what was going to be a perfectly great night.”

Scarlet narrowed her eyes at him, “A perfectly great night” And then she shook her head, ” I am curious about it,” she flipped a page and pointed to a woman on it, “She is beautiful.” John numbly moved to the bed, sat down next to her, and leaned over to look at the woman’s erotic photo. Were they looking at a porn mag on their first night together? That thought stirred his excitement again. He slowly put his arms out behind him and leaned back on the bed, watching Scarlet, a little hunched over, flip through some more pages.

She looked back at him and said, “I want you to fuck me like a slut from these adult erotic movies.”. She had taken her shirt off, and now her big tits lay nicely mounded in the lace bra; John itched to unclasp it. John had unbuttoned his pants and now lay on the bed with a noticeable bulge showing through his boxers. Scarlet put the mag back on the nightstand, moved closer to John, and asked, “Can we try it?” She was now on all fours, crawling towards him on the bed as the big boobs hanging out, almost falling out of her bra. John stared down at them. She took off the rest of her jeans and panties as he slid his boxers down his legs. He moved towards her, and his hands found her shoulders and went down to cup her big tits. He moved closer to her and pressed his lips hard against hers. He was rubbing over her erect nipples with his thumb.

John moved to lay her down in front of him. Hovering over Scarlet, he braced his body with one arm and held his massive erection against her pussy lips with his other hand. John teased her by rubbing just the tip of his rigid erection up and down the folds of her pussy. Scarlet was wet, and he could feel the juices lubricating the end of his dick as he teased her. Scarlet was arching her hips against him and crying out, “OMG! You have to, just put it in! Please. I want to make an erotic movie, shoot a few erotic xxx videos, some adult films, and become a porn star!”

John paused for a short moment to look at her. Scarlet’s hair was getting tousled from all their movements on the bed; her luscious lips were filled with passion, and her blue eyes were energetic. Scarlet liked that John was in control. John sensed her arousal as she gave in to him. Already slippery from all the teasing, he slid it in. He groaned loudly from the relief he felt at finally being inside of her; he then set a fast and hard pace. Scarlet’s arms pulled at his waist as she moaned with pleasure. He was moving fast against her, and their bodies slid up the sheets.

Scarlet was warm and soft inside, her hot body closing around him as they fuck. She put her legs up in the air and moved the hips up so John could push in as deep as possible. Every thrust and touch brought her closer to a feeling which was building inside her. The feeling built up as heat pooled in her lower stomach and released itself, and her legs shook with lots of ecstasies, and her moans grew even louder. John felt his orgasm move up and out. Erotic energy coursed through his body, momentarily shutting off all the other thoughts and feelings until he came inside her. Exhausted, John moved to lie beside her, beside the xxx erotic movies.

Two conferences are just around the corner that fellow free software and free culture advocates, hackers, curious technology users, and critical media participants won't want to miss. LibrePlanet and Free Culture X 2013 are two really exciting conferences at the intersection of technology, social justice, and media studies.
LibrePlanet is the Free Software Foundation's annual conference, this year titled "Commit Change", and will take place at the Harvard University Science Center on March 23rd & 24th 2013 or, in other words, very very soon! Free Culture X 2013 is this year's Students for Free Culture conference and will take place April 20th & 21st at New York Law School. 
What can you expect at each? 

LibrePlanet has a lot to offer people from different areas of expertise with varying levels of experience in free software. Whether you're interested in the profound social implications of software ownership, producing and sharing media with free technologies, or harnessing your own power over the computers around you as a hacker, you can get a lot out of  meeting fellow conference-goers and attending the talks and workshops at LibrePlanet. 
Registration is free for FSF Associate Members, or $90 otherwise. Discounted rates are available for students or for a single-day pass, and of course volunteering is a great way to get in at no cost at all! If you are unable to attend, there will be a live broadcast of the event online.

Free Culture X 2013 is half conference, with one day of talks and panels by brilliant minds challenging media monopolies and permission culture, and half unconference, with participatory workshops and working groups.
Registration is 100% pay-what-you-want, with a suggested donation of $15.00. Proceeds from the conference will help defray the costs of running a nonprofit, so please support as much as you can!
Both conferences will be very accessible and you should absolutely come if you are able. If you can't come, consider following along with the live webcast, participating in discussions during the events through social media, spreading the word now for others to attend, and donating if free software and free culture are valuable to you.

This is a follow-up to "Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0" but instead of focusing on the problems with NC and ND, the editorial draws upon defenses of NC and ND to highlight how they go against the stated mission of Creative Commons. You can also read the original post on ​QuestionCopyright.org.


A few weeks ago, Students for Free Culture published a detailed and thoroughly cited post calling for the retirement of proprietary license options in Creative Commons 4.0. Already the story has been picked up by Techdirt and Slashdot and it has spurred lots of heated debate around the value of the NonCommercial (NC) and NoDerivatives (ND) licenses to Creative Commons and to rightsholders, but not a lot of discussion has been framed around the official mission and vision of Creative Commons.

Creative Commons has responded to the post stating that adopters of NC and ND licenses "may eventually migrate to more open licenses once exposed to the benefits that accompany sharing," maintaining that these licenses have been a strategic measure to approach that goal. The name Creative Commons itself highlights the aim of enabling a network of ideas and expressions that are commonly shared and owned or, as we usually call it, the commons. To be very explicit, one need not look any further than Creative Commons' mission statement (added emphasis) to see that this is what they work for:

Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

• "Big media could adopt NC or ND, but not free culture licenses"
• "So much is already similarly available, it should all be CC"
• "The purpose of Creative Commons is to provide a diversity of options"
• "Creative Commons isn't an ideological organization about free culture"

• "Everyone's freedom should be respected"
• "This is an effort to dictate our license choices"
• "Promoting freedom by taking away choices is hypocritical"
• "This is just one definition of freedom"

• "They serve a purpose even though they aren't free"
• "A vague protection is better than nothing"
• "These protect us from big media stealing our work"
• "Not everyone wants to use a free culture license"

• Send a letter to the Creative Commons Board of Directors about your concerns.
• Publish your letter or a blog post on the issue (and send it to the list below)
• Join the Creative Commons licenses development list to participate in discussions of the 4.0 draft: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
• Contribute to the CC 4.0 wiki pages: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0

 This is crossposted from the Students for Free Culture blog: http://freeculture.org/blog/2012/08/27/stop-the-inclusion-of-proprietary-licenses-in-creative-commons-4-0/
Over the past several years, Creative Commons has increasingly recommended free culture licenses over non-free ones. Now that the drafting process for version 4.0 of their license set is in full gear, this is a “a once-in-a-decade-or-more opportunity” to deprecate the proprietary NonCommercial and NoDerivatives clauses. This is the best chance we have to dramatically shift the direction of Creative Commons to be fully aligned with the definition of free cultural works by preventing the inheritance of these proprietary clauses in CC 4.0's final release.
The concept of free culture has its roots in the history of free software (popularly marketed as "open source software"), and it’s an important philosophical underpinning to the CC license set. As with free software, the word "free" in free culture means free as in freedom, not as in price, but Creative Commons has not set or adhered to any standard or promise of rights or taken any ethical position in their support of a free culture. The definition of free cultural works describes the necessary freedoms to ensure that media monopolies cannot form to restrict the creative and expressive freedoms of others and outlines which restrictions are permissible or not. Although Creative Commons provides non-free licenses, the fact that they recognize the definition reveals a willingness and even desire to change.
Creative Commons started off by focusing much more on flexibility for rightsholders, but since its early days, the organization has moved away from that position. Several projects and licenses have been retired such as the Sampling, Founders' Copyright, and Developing Nations License. It's obvious that something like Founders' Copyright which keeps "all rights reserved" for 14 years (before releasing into the public domain) is not promoting free culture. Giving rightsholders more options and easier ways to choose what rights they want to give others actually reinforces permission culture, creates a fragmented commons, and takes away freedom from all cultural participants.
What's wrong with NC and ND?
The two proprietary clauses remaining in the CC license set are NonCommercial (NC) and NoDerivatives (ND), and it is time Creative Commons stopped supporting them, too. Neither of them provide better protection against misappropriation than free culture licenses. The ND clause survives on the idea that rightsholders would not otherwise be able protect their reputation or preserve the integrity of their work, but all these fears about allowing derivatives are either permitted by fair use anyway or already protected by free licenses. The NC clause is vague and survives entirely on two even more misinformed ideas. First is rightsholders' fear of giving up their copy monopolies on commercial use, but what would be considered commercial use is necessarily ambiguous. Is distributing the file on a website which profits from ads a commercial use? Where is the line drawn between commercial and non-commercial use? In the end, it really isn't. It does not increase the potential profit from work and it does not provide any better protection than than Copyleft does (using the ShareAlike clause on its own, which is a free culture license).
The second idea is the misconception that NC is anti-property or anti-privatization. This comes from the name NonCommercial which implies a Good Thing (non-profit), but it's function is counter-intuitive and completely antithetical to free culture (it retains a commercial monopoly on the work). That is what it comes down to. The NC clause is actually the closest to traditional "all rights reserved" copyright because it treats creative and intellectual expressions as private property. Maintaining commercial monopolies on cultural works only enables middlemen to continue enforcing outdated business models and the restrictions they depend on. We can only evolve beyond that if we abandon commercial monopolies, eliminating the possibility of middlemen amassing control over vast pools of our culture.
Most importantly, though, is that both clauses do not actually contribute to a shared commons. They oppose it. The fact that the ND clause prevents cultural participants from building upon works should be a clear reason to eliminate it from the Creative Commons license set. The ND clause is already the least popular, and discouraging remixing is obviously contrary to a free culture. The NonCommercial clause, on the other hand, is even more problematic because it is not so obvious in its proprietary nature. While it has always been a popular clause, it's use has been in slow and steady decline. Practically, the NC clause only functions to cause problems for collaborative and remixed projects. It prevents them from being able to fund themselves and locks them into a proprietary license forever. For example, if Wikipedia were under a NC license, it would be impossible to sell printed or CD copies of Wikipedia and reach communities without internet access because every single editor of Wikipedia would need to give permission for their work to be sold. The project would need to survive off of donations (which Wikipedia has proven possible), but this is much more difficult and completely unreasonable for almost all projects, especially for physical copies. Retaining support for NC and ND in CC 4.0 would give them much more weight, making it extremely difficult to retire them later, and continue to feed the fears that nurture a permission culture.
Why does this need to happen now?
People have been vocal about this issue for a long time, and awareness of the problematic nature of ND and NC has been spreading, especially in the areas of Open Educational Resources (such as OpenCourseWare) and Open Access to research. With the percentage of CC-licensed works that permit remixing and commercial use having doubled since Creative Commons' first year, it's clear that there is a growing recognition that the non-free license clauses are not actually necessary, or even good.
Both NC and ND are incompatible with free licenses and many, if not the vast majority, of NC and ND licensed works will not be relicensed after CC 4.0, so the longer it takes to phase out those clauses, the more works will be locked into a proprietary license. There will never be a better time than this. Creative Commons has been shifting away from non-free licenses for several years, but if it does not abandon them entirely it will fail as a commons and divide our culture into disconnected parts, each with its own distinct licence, rights and permissions granted by the copyright holders who 'own' the works.
In December of 2006, Creative Commons implemented a subtle difference between the pages for free culture and non-free licenses: green and yellow background graphics (compare Attribution-ShareAlike to Attribution-NonCommercial). This was also when they began using license buttons that include license property icons, so that there would be an immediate visual cue as to the specific license being used before clicking through to the deed. In February of 2008, they began using a seal on free culture licenses that said "Approved for Free Cultural Works", which was another great step in the right direction. In July of this year, Creative Commons released a completely redesigned license chooser that explicitly says whether the configuration being used is free culture or not. This growing acknowledgement of free vs. non-free licenses was a crucial development, since being under a Creative Commons license is so often equated with being a free cultural work. Now, retiring the NC and ND clauses is a critical step in Creative Commons' progress towards taking a pro-freedom approach.
The NC and ND clauses not only depend on, but also feed misguided notions about their purpose and function. With that knowledge, it would be a mistake not to retire them. Creative Commons should not depend on and nurture rightsholders' fears of misappropriation to entice them into choosing non-free CC licenses. Instead of wasting effort maintaining and explaining a wider set of conflicting licenses, Creative Commons as an organization should focus on providing better and more consistent support for the licenses that really make sense. We are in the perfect position to finally create a unified and undivided commons. Creative Commons is at a crossroads.This decisive moment will in all likelihood bind their direction either being stuck serving the fears that validate permission culture or creating a shared commons between all cultural participants.
We don't want the next generation of the free culture movement to be saddled with the dichotomies of the past; we want our efforts to be spent fighting the next battles.
What should we do?
There have been lots of discussions on the CC-license list about promoting free culture licenses and discouraging proprietary ones. A couple of proposals have been made to encourage the use of free licenses over the non-free ones.
One is a rebranding of the non-free licenses. They could be differentiated in a much more significant way than it currently is, such as referring to NC and ND as the "Restricted Commons" or "Limited Commons" or some variant thereof. License buttons could also be color coded in the same way that license pages are (green for free culture licenses, yellow for proprietary ones). Another proposal is to rename NonCommercial to something more honest such as CommercialMonopoly.
While these proposals and other ideas are certainly worth supporting, we should not lose sight on our ultimate goal: for Creative Commons to stop supporting non-free licenses. We should not feel like this is impossible to achieve at this point, as it will be much more difficult to do later. More people than ever are starting to advocate against proprietary CC licenses, and there is clear evidence and reasoning behind these arguments. We have the power to prevent the inclusion of non-free clauses in this upcoming version of the Creative Commons License set.
To join us in resisting the inclusion of proprietary clauses in CC 4.0, there are a few important things you can do:

• Send a letter to the Creative Commons Board of Directors about your concerns.
• Publish your letter or a blog post on the issue (and send it to the list below)
• Join the Creative Commons licenses development list to participate in discussions of the 4.0 draft: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-licenses
• Contribute to the CC 4.0 wiki pages: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0

Blender's Open Movie Projects have already proved that it's possible to produce stunningly high-quality 3D animated films exclusively using free software in a studio setting. Now, a new animated short film called Tube, inspired by the ancient epic poem of Gilgamesh, is expanding on that work to bring free culture to the masses. The Tube project is not merely evidence of the technical capabilities of free software tools like Blender, PiTiVi, and Fedora GNU/Linux, but living proof of their viability for independent filmmakers. The most impressive aspect of the project is that it has managed to come together through distributed collaboration between 56 artists from 22 countries — some of which are at war. Tube truly highlights the incredible unifying power of free software tools and a free culture model. 

Within the first few days, Tube's Kickstarter campaign reached the minimal baseline goal of $22K and subsequently hit Slashdot. As the film enters the final stages of production, the Tube team needs as much support as they can get to make this story a huge success for free software, free culture, and independent animators everywhere. With the production funding target of $50K in sight and just a couple days left in the campaign, this is your last chance to support this ambitious undertaking and get your name in the film as a backer. There is enormous potential here; as Mashable questions, 'Will This Open-Source Animated Film Change the Movie Industry Forever?'
The film's public release is scheduled for 7 months from now along with all the assets, source, and project files under the free culture and copyleft Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) licence. For an in-depth discussion with the team, check out this interview with the Tube project founders on Libre Graphics World. It's up to us now to help Tube affirm the legitimacy of producing free cultural works in a fully free software workflow. 

During my 2010 summer internship at the Free Software Foundation I was able to bring lots of new ideas to the table, get involved with campaigns and publicity, and take on leadership roles like organizing the Massachusetts LibrePlanet Team.

One project of mine was to find a Credit Union for the FSF to partner with in order to bring eligibility to their membership base. Why? Banks have too much power. They've destroyed economies. Credit unions are basically banks (they offer all the same services and often more), but they are structured democratically and don't have to potential to do the kind of damage big banks do. Credit unions are not-for-profit, member-owned cooperatives rather than profit-driven corporations. Members elect a volunteer (unpaid) board of directors, and profits don't go to shareholders but instead go into lower rates on loans, higher rates on savings, and better services. If you're still letting big banks hold your money, see what credit unions you're eligible to join!


Finally, over one year after my internship, I've finally finished my project. If you are a card-carrying member of the FSF, you are now eligible to join Digital Federal Credit Union. Some neat benefits include being able to deposit checks online, and DCU is one of the very few credit unions that has that allow you to cash checks via your Android or iPhone using an app (disclaimer: zero-cost proprietary software). For more information check out the announcement and join DCU today!

My post on the Novacut project stirred up quite a shitstorm, pardon my language. I can't even attempt to explain the whole point of my post—something that seemed to be misunderstood by anyone who didn't already agree—better than Jeff "Nekohayo" Fortin has in his blog post, which I have included below:

Chaos

• I could not condone his post: I was agreeing with what he presented.
• I could not add arguments in the same direction, since
• I could not think of a better way to say what he said, although his point about “this is a trend to be stopped” was certainly misunderstood as a personal attack.
• You can guess from the tone of my YouTube comment, I was not in a good disposition at that time.
• I am not the best writer there is (it took me over 9 hours just to write the post you’re reading right now).

And all hell broke lose.

What would I think of Novacut, if I was not a cautious cynical old fart?

What will happen in the future?

• Novacut succeeds and produces the FOSS editor that people have been awaiting for so long (simple in the beginning, but usable with more coming over time). In that case, join Novacut since it is the way forward.
• Novacut manages to produce some code that others will use and useful lessons are provided for others (eg design decisions, workflows, etc.)

“When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”