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Category: Information Commons (Page 4 of 26)

Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other

North Carolina Science Blogging Conference – Jan 20

The Triangle Science Blogging Conference has become the North Carolina Science Blogging Conference. One look at the registration list (so far) tells why; the Conference, already at 35 registrants, is drawing folks from all over the country. We’ve got months to go, but we’ve gotten great people initially. You can join in. Please do.

NC Science Blogging Conference

What: North Carolina Science Blogging Conference
When: January 20, 2007 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: UNC-Chapel Hill (building and room to be announced)
Preconference: So You Want to be a Blogger skills session on Thursday, January 18th from 2-4 p.m. at the UNC Health Science Library

Note: ibiblio.org is proud to be one of the sponsors for the North Carolina Bloggers Conference and I’m delighted to be one of the organizers helping out Anton Zuiker, Bora Zivkovic, and Brian Russell.

Carolina Innovations: Open Source Licensing: The Basics, The Benefits, The Buzz

As part of the Office of Technology Development‘s Carolina Innovations Seminars, I’ll be speaking on “Open Source Licensing: The Basics, The Benefits, The Buzz” on November 9 from 5:15 to 6:15 in 014 Sitterson Hall.

In the spirit of Openness, please dear readers and potential attendees, use the comments here to let me know any specific questions or areas that you’d like to see covered. I don’t want to talk endlessly on the differences between GPL 2 and 3, for example, unless someone cares, but then if someone does I want to be sure to be prepared and to do a good job.

Some helpful source material (pun intended) can be found at these links:
Free Software Foundation
Open Source Initiative
GNU Project
GNU Philosophy including the 4 Software Freedoms
Software Freedom Law Center
Wikipedia on Free Software
Wikipedia on Open Source Software

For non-software, see Creative Commons, iCommons (international Creative Commons movement) , and the Science Commons Project.

This is another experiment in opening the conversation like the one I just did down at Berry College where using the wiki really worked well. This time a blog post instead.

So post below.

Silverstein, Gillmor, Weinberger – all coming to UNC

Upcoming speakers of interest.

Craig Silverstein
CRAIG SILVERSTEIN
Google‘s Tech Director will be speaking on Thursday, October 26 from 4 – 5:30 at the Medical Biomolecular Research Building here at UNC-CH. Details here.

Dan Gillmor
DAN GILLMOR
Dan Gillmor is director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project affiliated with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
He is the author of We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004; O’Reilly Media). Dan likes to say that he “spent almost 25 years in the newspaper business, and am proud of it.”
He’ll be visiting the UNC J-School and giving a public talk at 4 pm Monday November 13 in the Pleasants Family Room, Wilson Library, UNC-CH.

David Weinberger
DAVID WEINBERGER
The School of Information and Library Science’s 2006 Henderson Lecture will feature Dr. David Weinberger who will present, “Everything is Miscellaneous” at 2 p.m., Thursday, December 7, 2006 in the Murphey Hall Auditorium (room 116) on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A reception will follow.
You probably know David Weinberger as the author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and of the blog, Journal of Hyperlinked Organization (JOHO). He’ll be here for the UNC Symposium on Social Networking as well.

At Berry College

Down in Georgia (like the Devil) at Berry College near Rome. The Georgia NorthWest Mountains are in full color and the spacious, 26,000 acre, campus is rife with deer which are more common than squirrels.
Edenic is defined here. Wireless is fine in the buildings but not in my cottage, a log cabin, up the mountain from here.
My talk is pretty organized but I’m asked to cover quite a bit in order to cover the submitted questions. I rather like the challenge.

ibiblian speakers – Tues, Wed, Thurs, etc

A lot of folks from ibiblio are speaking around this week:

Tuesday October 17, noon – Fred Stutzman will be speaking in the ISIS TechTueday series at Duke University

Wednesday October 18, 3:30 – Kristina Spurgin will talk about Personal Information Management as part of the SILS Research Colloquium in room 208 Manning Hall.

Thursday October 19, 8:45 am – Fred will be doing the keynote for the UNC Caroina Technology Consultants Conference at the Stone Center.

Thursday October 19, 7 pm – I will be speaking as part of the Evans Lecture Series on “Expression and Repression” at Berry College in Georgia. I’m building the talk from questions posed by students on a wiki.

Thursday October 26 4 pm (but come early over 700 seats will be contested) – Fred and I will be among the panelists at the Health Affairs Library presentation by Google Tech Director Craig Silverstein.

Dancing back at the Weave, but …

The News and Observer is reporting that dancing and hooping will be back at our favorite Third Place, Weaver Street Market at Carr Mill in Carrboro. There is a policy now that has a long list of restrictions including:

“2. Solicitation and distribution of literature or handbills is prohibited except as specifically authorized as part of a Weaver Street Market event.*

*WSM will sponsor a monthly event for non-profit-making organizations with values consistent with its mission to have tables and make their literature available according to guidelines set forth for this purpose.”

[I am trying to imagine handbill day at the Weave now.]

“3. Loitering is prohibited.” [staying a bit too long is part of what a third place is about, isn’t it?]

“5. Unauthorized performances and unauthorized large or publicly advertised gatherings are prohibited. “Performance” means any activity intending to attract or having the effect of attracting a crowd of spectators, or that’s volume disturbs others. Performances need to have the advance written permission of Carr Mill Mall.”

[Does this mean Weiner Dog Meet Up will be called a performance?]

Who talks about what? Jones and Silverstein

October 19th, I’ll be at Berry College in Rome, Georgia as part of the “Expression and Repression” series. I will try not to be repressed. The wiki they set up has me talking about (so far):

  1. What is Net neutrality and why should we care about it?
  2. How has copyright law in the United States been subverted by commercial interests, and what should we (as a society, as a people) do about it?
  3. What do you feel is the future of online file sharing, i.e music,videos and books, and its role in our society?

On October 26th, Googlist Craig Silverstein will be speaking to a growing crowd (almost 400 tickets delivered so far) on:

  1. Making more information searchable, with a focus on google book search and google scholar
  2. Making information more useful, with a focus on ‘expert ranking’ schemes such as google co-op/google health.
  3. Making information more accessible, with a focus on mobile computing, ubiquitous computing, etc.

Citizen Journalists shine light on Congressional Spouse-hirings

The Sunlight Foundation‘s Family Business Project asked citizen journalists to find out how many members of the House of Representatives have their spouses on the payroll.

In less than 2 days, “Citizen Muckrakers have investigated 437 members of Congress, and tentatively found 19 spouses who were paid by a member’s campaign committee-totaling some $641,200 since January 1, 2005.”

The organizers at Sunlight can hardly believe it themselves — and they promised to start the verification process on Monday.

Sunlight Labs
offers a number of cool tools for watching Congress and they promise more.

If you have skills, they are looking for an intern.

ROTFL! 1@/\/\3rz not 1337

BBC gives us the shocking news: “Geekspeak still baffles web users”.

The article tells us “So while 40% of online Britons receive news feeds, 67% did not know that the official term for this service was Really Simple Syndication.” Not that Brits need to know that but would it help if they knew that the meaning of RSS has changed with each release beginning as RDF Site Summary (for RSS 0.9 and 1.0), then becoming the more luser friendly Rich Site Summary (for RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0) before being renamed Really Simple Syndication (for RSS 2.0).

Whilst your garden variety Brits are not so 1337, those who use the net are Open savvy to the point of rejecting the iPods for more Open MP3 players:

Regular surfers are, according to the survey, gadget-hungry. Interestingly, although 68% of those interviewed possessed an MP3 player, only 20% owned iPods – the biggest selling digital music player.

The iPod may be less popular with surfers because there are fewer online music stores from which music can be purchased, said Mr Burmaster.

“The whole ethos behind the internet is about open access and for people already online, being able to access music from a variety of sources is important,” he said.

IMLS funds Folkstreams.net

Just got word that IMLS, Institute of Museum and Library Services, has awarded the ibiblio-led Folkstreams.net project grant support to the tune of $129,242.

IMLS says:

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science — Chapel Hill, NC
Year: 2006
Amount: $129,424
Grant: National Leadership Grants for Libraries – Building Digital Resources

Expanding on the work of a previous IMLS grant, UNC’s ibiblio.org digital library will archive, digitize, and video stream 35 new documentary films. Partnering with Folkstreams, Inc. and the University’s Southern Folklore Collection, the project will produce a guide to best practices in video digitization; add 20 new video clips to its Video Aids for Film Preservation; and create portals, guides, and outreach materials for senior citizens and teachers. Rare documentaries will provide knowledge of American folklife to these two distinct audiences using the easy-to-access folkstreams.net Website.

Xeni goes wild — on Tibet updates

Xeni’s blog added a lot of stories last night.

A good long interview with Lobsang Wangyal in his role as organizer of the Miss Tibet Pageant. He’s also the head of the Association of Tibetan Journalists.

A bit from a Finnish newspaper about the Dalai Lama in which he says that his successor could 1) be chosen by election or by the traditional reincarnation method and that 2) his successor could be a woman — even a Finnish woman. He sent a warning to the Chinese about the delicate environment of the Himalayas. His final message in the interview: “Live happy and spread happiness around you” Xeni link here.

The developers of TorPark, a USB portable Tor tunnel builder, have dedicated their latest release to the Panchen Lama Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. One of the Panchen Lama’s supporter wrote to the Torpark team with news of an open reward for $30,000 (USD) for anyone who establishes contact with the abducted religious figure — reports Xeni.

Here’s how TorPark describes itself:
Torpark launchs a Tor circuit connection, which creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer indirectly to a Tor exit computer, allowing you to surf the internet anonymously.

A bit about DRM-free Tibetan music for sale from Cruxy.com. Cruxy is a marketplace for ” independent original creativity.”

I’d swear there was a bit about Cisco making a donation to the Air Jaldi Summit, but I can’t find it. A Cisco rep, Jim Forster, will be at the Summit to talk about their world’s highest WiFi in Nepal. Some others to be at the Summit include Danese Cooper (who was at the Delhi “Owning the Future Conference”) and FSF‘s RMS aka Richard Stallman.

Fred on Monetizing Social Networks; Xeni on Tibetan Wireless

Fred writes and Xeni skypes — each on their favorite topics.

Fred returns from BarCampNYC2 to report on 5 ways to make bucks from social networks and essays on the ups and downs of each. Then he adds three more. These three are by far the most interesting and add deeper insights to what makes communities happen and unhappen (okay I shoulda said “fall apart”).

Xeni visits the SOCALWUG (also known as Southern California Wireless User Group) where she chatted about her visit to the Tibetan government in exile and in particular the wireless mesh network in Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj. She also skypes with Yael Ben-David back in the Himalayas. Lots of monkey talk goes on which is good entertainment and good insight on how to deal with various local problems. The SOCALWUG could use a little postproduction help; the buzz and humm in the video is tough to endure. Xeni hypes the talk on her Tibet blog, but there’s not a transcript there just an announcement of the talk. You need the SOCALWUG link.

Gilberto Gil at WIPO

By now half the world, okay only half of those who are interested in Intellectual Property issues, have posted about Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil‘s statements at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week.

Intellectual Property Watch has posted an interview with Gil in which he talks about his own use of Creative Commons licenses for his music, about being a “government functionary” and ultimately about his takes on IP and WIPO.

The WIPO/Gil story gets detail treatment from CPTech bloggers in Geneva where Gil is quoted as saying:

We are living a historical moment when, more than ever, intellectual property deserves to be the object of a debate that corresponds to the breadth and complexity that this subject has acquired. We have seen that a number of sectors of the international community has become increasingly aware of the importance of discussing intellectual property in all its aspects, particularly its effects on social and economic development, as illustrated by the Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

It is clear to us that development will only be ensured if there is a balance between intellectual property rights and obligations and the public interest, as had been highlighted by the Ambassador of Argentina, on behalf of the Group of Friends of Development. If such balance is lost we will violate the nature of knowledge itself: we should never forget Thomas Jefferson’s words, according to which there would not be any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property than ideas, whose sharing does not necessarily harm anyone….

The Brazilian Government is concerned with the fact that the Basic Proposal for a Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations, approved by the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights, remains the object of disagreements and had not been able to please the majority of Members, both developed and developing.

Should this Assembly confirm the convening of a Diplomatic Conference with a view to finalizing the Treaty, we must be aware that many questions remain to be solved after several years of hard work on the subject, shedding doubt on the very opportunity of such a negotiating exercise.

The Brazilian Government calls for the Assembly to hold reasonable and comprehensive discussions on this subject. If the Diplomatic Conference is ultimately confirmed by this Assembly, notwithstanding many pending issues, we will be consciously assuming the risk of another failure at WIPO, repeating the outcome of the Diplomatic of the year 2000, meant to approve a new audiovisual treaty.

At the international level, many different organizations are already engaged in assessing the impacts of intellectual property. The UN, UNESCO, WTO, WHO, CBD, UNCTAD and many others have been contributing to the debate on intellectual property and development.

Orkut has 1/4 of all Internet Users

in Brazil! That makes Orkut ripe for fishing expeditions by Brazilian police, but Google, the owner of Orkut, is having none of that — or are they? Stories seem to change with the hours as Google agrees to comply with a Brazilian judge’s request for records then says they will not but then says under certain conditions they will.

Remember that’s one quarter of all the Internet users in Brazil; there were 25,900,000 Internet users in Brazil as of Dec./05 so about 6.5 million Brazilians on Orkut. Get the latest news here.

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