“We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism where we do not actually own the products we buy, but we are merely granted limited uses of them as long as we pay the rent.”

So says the Free Culture Manifesto, a brief document that states the foundations of the Free Culture movement. The open-source movement was started by two Swarthmore students—who also founded the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons (SCDC)—who sued Diebold over its effort to halt posting of internal e-mails on the Web. (Diebold relented and announced it wouldn’t fight posting of e-mails pertaining to problems with its e-voting machines.) The pair was inspired by the writings of Lawrence Lessig.

The movement is spreading. Perhaps a reaction to the draconian actions of the Recording Industry Association of America, or the threats of the RIAA’s motion picture counterpart, or the enhtuasiasm of youth, 13 chapters of the Free Culture organization have taken root on campuses across the country.

Free Culture has a Web site, a blog, and resources to help interested students start chapters on their own campuses.

It’s been a long time since the student activism of the Vietnam war era, but I’m old enough to remember it. (Hell, I’m old enough to have participated in it.) If the Free Culture movement picks up a quarter the steam of the anti-war protests of the 60’s, copyright law is in for some drastic changes despite the lobbying dollars copyright owners throw at Congress to protect their intellectual properties.

For corporations and other institutions that own intellectual property—particularly digital property—the Free Culture site is required reading.