I just turned in a huge fat paper discussing basically why Free and Open Source hackers, programmers, and advocates were compelled to protest in front of San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. This is probably some of my most interesting dissertation material, covering the DeCSS affair, which was productive of a number of lawsuits and legal actions and a lot of hacker protest and civil disobedience, including some pretty impressive
poetry of protest, the author going public recently with a piercing legal/cultural analysis of the whole affair. (Good job Schoen, I am glad to see you thinking in cultural terms)

Here is my abstract:

The Re-localization of Intellectual Property Rights and the Rise of Expressive Rights among Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Hackers.

Abstract:

This paper analyzes the particular meanings of expressive rights among FOSS hackers and examines the ways in which they have come to signify their technical pragmatics as a form of First Amendment speech. Drawing from and extending work on the cultural life of liberalism, I argue the particular free speech character of FOSS historically reframes a longer Anglo-European tradition of liberal values and laws. FOSS expands the scope of expressive activity to include technical practices; a