Brett Smith's Answer to Lessig's Challenge

Current Status

This is up-to-date as of December 2006. I won't bore you with every nitty-gritty detail, but it's an honest assessment of where I stand overall.

Description	Amount	Running Total
Phone/cable/DSL service	$1215	-$1215
Movies, music, etc.	$1070	-$2285
Hardware	$100	-$2385
Donations	$1360	-$1025
Volunteering	$725	-$300

I moved to Boston late last summer, so I haven't been able to donate or volunteer much. December is usually a big donating month for me, so hopefully I'll be breaking even again soon.

What's this about?

In July, 2002, Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford, gave a speech at the Open Source Convention. He issued the following challenge to free software's supporters:

There's a handful, we can name them, of people you could be supporting, you could be taking. Let's put this in perspective: How many people have given to EFF? OK. How many people have given to EFF more money than they have given to their local telecom to give them shitty DSL service? See? Four. How many people have given more money to EFF than they give each year to support the monopoly—to support the other side?

It has since been dubbed Lessig's Challenge, and become something of movement within a movement. Think The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement; the only differences are that this is real and involves contributing time and money rather than singing.

The basic idea here is that you give at least as much support to the forces against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and similar legislation — the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and so on — as you do the forces behind it: the movie industry, the recording industry, telecommunications providers, and the like.

Above, I've outlined my recent progress. I encourage you participate, too; there are a lot of ways to do so:

Donate. There are plenty of organizations fighting the good fight, and they need monetary support. Most have membership programs: join and count your name among their supporters.
Volunteer. Many non-profits are always looking for volunteer help, or have local chapters that you can join to participate. It's a great way to keep current with what's going on, and lend your expertise to groups that can use it.
Act. Talk with decision-makers in government. Raise awareness about these issues in your community. Contribute to a favorite free software project. There are plentys of ways you can take action even on an individual level.

If not us, then who? If not now, when?