We interviewed Chris Fernandez, of the Binary Freedom project to find out what they are doing to defend digital freedom.

Publisher's Note: the article was originally titled "Digital Freedom...", but there is another group by that name. We apologize for any confusion, and have changed the headline accordingly.

When and why was Binary Freedom started?
Binary Freedom used to be a GNU/Linux user group, most of the time we discuss about politics related to the digital world in general, so after some thinking with Jeff Grant and Angela piñeros, we decided to start a new project solely dedicated to online and street political activism for digital rights using FSF Eben Moglen dotCommunist Manifesto (http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/dcm.html) and the Free Software and the Death of Copyright also by the same author (http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/anarchism.html). We lost some people that were only technically motivated but we gain 3 times more members with the change.

Where does the project stand at this point?
we have people across the USA, Europe and some in Asia, but the city of Boston group, is our biggest chapter since we originally started here and this is a city of native social activist, students, the FSF offices, MIT and lot of free software advocates that decided to step up to become activists. In this time we have pick up a very group of active and passionated people like Ringo Kamens, Matthew Flaschen, Andrew Gray and Christian Einfeldt and Peter Olson. We are working in different fronts, our biggest campaign at the moment is the freethebbc that like in many other projects we are working very close with the FSF, we have two or three mayor projects plan for the fall, that are going to shake up things.

How many active people are actively involved in Binary Freedom?
It depends, we have two major groups, the online group and the street group,the street group is not very active online, but very active on actions on the floor, if you visit our wiki (http://wiki.binaryfreedom.info) people can see our past actions around Boston, the last one was in coordination with the FSF in London at the door of the BBC. The online group is very active online, now in summer like expected activity has gone down because most of us are also involved with anti-war and other social political movements and we are very busy, this is why we are planning for the fall/winter/spring, we can say summer is when we get off the computer.

What distinguishes Binary Freedom from other projects?
The most visible is that we are not center on technical issues but progressive political/ethical ones. most of us are very technical in what we do for a living but we already have a lot of groups that dedicate to helping others technically or create outstanding free software.

Can you give me any idea of Binary Freedom's impact (an example or two of how you've helped people)?
There are many some of them are directly because of us others are because we help other organizations moving their petitions and campaigns around. From the top of my head I remember the campaign we did online were we got a good campaign (ed: in Thailand) to sent emails to ministers, parliament members, and the government speaker... and it WORKED. As of Jun 2007, YouTube has been unblocked under the provision no videos insulting the King will be posted, which is another issue, but we got half the job done. also thanks to litigation by the EFF and letters from Binary Freedom to Ric Silver himself, he has called off his DMCA intimidation campaign and licensed the Electric Slide under a creative commons license.

In February 2007, we launched a campaign to request two things of the C-SPAN television network. We asked them to Back off their false DMCA claim against Nanci Pelosi as well as issue a public apology and to openly license their content and stop all claims against non-commercial infringer's C-SPAN announced shortly after that they would license their videos under a "Creative Commons" license, at the end they back off of their over-zealous licensing but no word has come back about their DMCA claims however this new licensing would remove any legal ground for such claims.

On April 7th, 2007 Activists from BinaryFreedom and BadVista crashed a Vista promotional party and Microsoft wasn't able to pitch their product to the students because people at the lecture knew the truth about Vista. there are many more actions we made a small difference I believe you can find then all in our wiki online (http://wiki.binaryfreedom.info/index.php/Our_Victories) will be worth for people to check our main site (http://www.binaryfreedom.info) for everyday actions and help out or subscribe to our announcement only lists.

Where lies ahead for Binary Freedom? What are some things you want to see happen?
Lot of work lies ahead and lot of changes, first we will like to see local chapters of progressive activists joining Binary Freedom around the world for local floor actions. We have a good group now of activist with a social mentality that are very talented in what they do. We don't have exactly the same political ideas but we all incline to the left side of the spectrum, some more than others. This makes our job very easy; we don't spend time fighting each other, but fighting for our rights and freedoms.

We will soon pick up the revolution that RMS started and take it to the next level with the FSF, EFF, ACLU, Free Culture and others alliance in different fronts and talking to politicians, with this Digital freedoms will stand up against digital oppression in any form and automatically with this empower Free Software.

What are the biggest challenges the Binary Freedom team faces?
Big corporate lobbies, they have the money but we have the spirit.

Is there anything else about Binary Freedom you think our audience should know?
If you are a passionated person looking out for social justice and think that this social justiceis in danger in the digital world, please join us create a localchapter, take a look at the URLs about Eben Moglen and see if you agree with what you read, even if you don't you can always help us only in the dedication to promote FreeSoftware.

Correction: Matthew Flaschen's name was misspelled in the interview. That is now corrected.