Accept no substitutes

Category: Virtual Communities (Page 9 of 20)

Links and notes from JOMC 191.8 Virtual Communities

Madison County Project to be screened tomorrow

Donna singing - Madison County Project

Rob Roberts writes to let us know of a screening of the film he made with Martha King:

What: Madison County Project: Documenting the Sound, a documentary short about ballad singing and filmmaking in Madison County, NC
When: Wednesday April 12th at 4:00 pm
Where: Murphey Hall, room 104 on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus
More: Madison County Project examines the tradition of unaccompanied ballad singing in Madison County, North Carolina and how the works of documentary filmmakers, photographers, and academics have influenced that tradition. The story unfolds through the historical works of John Cohen, Rob Amberg, and Harvey Wang as well as the voices of today’s ballad singers such as Sheila Kay Adams, Donna Ray Norton, Denise Norton O’Sullivan, and DeeDee Norton Buckner. Filmed in North Carolina, Madison County Project has been selected for multiple regional festivals and academic conferences as well as winning the Audience Choice Award at the 2005 Asheville Film Festival.

Note: Madison County Project is also featured on the ibiblio-hosted Folkstreams.net and blogged at http://www.madisoncountyproject.org/ (also ibiblio-hosted).

Universal Digital Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Just turned in answers for an email interview with Christian Hall of .Net (UK). Most were about the Blooker, but there were also a few about blogging in general. One question got me thinking (see below). What if every bit of Free Software carried the Universal Declaration of Human Rights within it? There are versions in over 300 languages so it could be truly viral in a good sense, discovered and read worldwide.

+4: How can blogger’s rights be improved?

i wish there were a way for technology to somehow embed the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in every piece of software produced. even more
so i wish that every country might live by the principles therein.

http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/index.htm

MySpace – Fear and Acceptance

MySpace is the second quickest growing site on the Internet over the past year (WashingtonPost.com reports), having grown 318% since last February to take the place as the 10th most visited site on the Net. Number one in growth, but lower in rank, is Blogger.netcom (thanks for the correction, Justin) at 528% and 27th in rank.
At the same time, MySpace is the target of a series of voodoo warnings including an overly cautious warning from Governor wannabe and current NC Attorney General Roy Cooper advising parents to shutdown their kids social networking.
Collegue Debashis Aikat in much more sane, in the quotes, except that he claims that “American young people have so much pressure to make friendships.” Err what does that mean? Kids don’t need or want friends? Kinda misses the point of being human, which does translate into online social behavior. Like the song says, more or less, “People Need People.” Most in productive and rewarding ways in fact.
Oh, Moral Panic, you may be rooted in statistically improbable fact, but you dog our waking and sleeping moments as if you were so much more real.

Penn Law Symposium – pre-Symposium

Got to meet the folks putting on the Journal of International and Economic Law Symposium last night for dinner. Great bunch of folks and a lot of lively conversation. Larry Rosen, Jean Camp, Patrick McCormick, Sophia D.Tawil, Claudette A. Pulido and Matthew D. Satchwell were at our table. Patrick gets to follow me this morning. Sophia, Claudette and Matt are from the Journal and are the organizers of the Symposium.
Put up my slides so’s that they are available on the web along with the symposium announcement with the bios of all of the participants.

In Philly, but in a hotel

As soon as I got in the cab here in Philly, my cell sang the unknown caller song. It was a reporter for USA Today (she’s in SFO) wanting a Blooker interview. She drove around SFO and I rode into Philly doing a tape. Lord
knows what was said, but be assured that the winners were not announced — that’s for Monday afterwhich all this Blookerness may subside.
Many folks are expecting a Blooker Prize Ceremony, but if there is one no one invited me. My tux hangs alone.

BBC Radio tomorrow early on the same subject (this one will run on Monday and may mention the winners).
Open Source and Developing Nations tomorrow at 9 am.
Dinner with the smart folks from University of Pennsylvania and the other speakers.

Open IP Practice and its Discontents at U of Penn Law

At the end of this week, March 31, I’ll be the kick off speaker at the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s symposium on Open Source in the International Marketplace: What the Open Source Intellectual Property Movement Means for the Developed and Developing Worlds sponsored by The University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Economic Law.

My topic is “Open IP Practice and its Discontents: Open Source, Open Content, and Open Access vs Contracts, Laws and Treaties.” I’ll contend that the need for openness in content and in access is perhaps better understood in some developing than in those with strong intellectual property regimes. Open source software could be very easily understood in such cultures and they could and will likely be the engines of FLOSS development as we have seen in Brazil and India and with the recent explosion of Ubantu Linux in and from Africa. But barriers and confusion caused by the ladder of restrictions in IP from End User License Agreements to difficult local laws to complex international law to one-sided treaties that supercede national sovereignty place contributors and users of software in an awkward bind. Should they just break the contract/law/treaty? Or should they innovate? What can be done to encourage more innovation if IP as practiced does not? Can FLOSS move from a quasi-political movement to a better, if not well, understood business practice? Can national databases on both patented and copyrighted materials as well as open prior art be coordinated better and more effeciently and in a way that a group of software developers spread around the world can depend on a common pool of resources?

One quick story: At a panel on IP held at UNC Law this fall, Cory Doctorow suggested to Mary Beth Peters and John Whealan that perhaps developing nations should follow the US example when it comes to IP. The US of the 19th Century, when we were developing ourselves. That is strong protection for national actors; almost no protection for foreign actors. “Worked well for the USA” said Cory.

Also want to point to how much Jamie Boyle’s Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society influenced my thinking on all of this. Jamie remembers that I gave him grief over the book being over 1/3 footnotes. Now we have more footnotes, he reminds me. And yes those footnotes inform me as they accumulate, but how does the message translate to others who would be developers and users of FLOSS?

What to say about how restraints like Digital Rights Management however badly done cripple innovation? There is almost too much to say in fact.

Dykki says that Intra is “eveloping a comprehensive FOSS package for Human Resources for Health Information Systems for Ministries of Health. We are currently actively developing HRIS strengthening activities in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Uganda, Lesotho, Swaziland, and now Tanzania/Zanzibar, with Kenya, Namibia, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal and Armenia (?!) expressing interest.

Of course, we are using Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL and PHP as the core architecture. One system focuses on public sector HRH management. Another on whole-country HRH training, registration and licensure. The
third is a workforce planning tool that uses predictive modeling to project actuals, needs and models interventions to close the gaps.”

Dykki and I wrote about how hard it can be to get people to gain skills and innovate when they can simply steal software — as I saw in Russia and in Africa.

http://wiki.africasource2.tacticaltech.org/ is an African conference that looks like it was very productive (but how does it address this topic?

Richard Schafer suggests that Open Source software could have a function in the IT area much like generic drugs do in the pharma area, that is, closed source vendors would have to deliver obvious quality differences in their products in order to compete and/or drop their prices (as the invisible hand would dictate).

Who is the author? What is the work? Who is the inventor? What is the invention? How do those basic questions play out in FLOSS and in non-European cultures?

Habermas on the Internet

Sign and Sight — Arts, Essays and Ideas from Germany — features portions of Jurgen HabermasBruno Kreisky Prize for the advancement of human rights speech. While the speech is mostly about a United States of Europe. Habermas does take a brief (translated) look at the Internet:

“Use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication. This is why the Internet can have a subversive effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes. But at the same time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time. The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus.”

(quote, bolding and translation from signandsight.com)

Justin Watt wins Parody case (with ACLU help)

Justin and the parody
Former UNC student and current Californian Justin Watt received a cease and desist letter from Liberty Council representing Exodus International calling for Justin to remove an image from his Justinsomnia blog. The image a clear parody of Exodus’ billboards inviting uphappy gays to try to become straight. Justin’s mod invites unhappy straight people to become gay.
Justin, instead of ceasing or desisting, contacted ACLU. Justin’s new ACLU lawyers countered with a strong letter of their own [PDF]. Reports are that Liberty/Exodus has since backed off.
Additional coverage in USA Today and on boingboing.net

Jones on BBC-TV

Allen and Son
Is there no end to Blooker madness? Yes, on April 3 when we announce the winners. In the meantime, BBC-TV has picked up from the BBC Radio Five lead and is flying a crew down to interview me, in my role as judge, tomorrow.
The question is where to do the interview. In the lovely SILS Library? Outside if the weather holds? Or at Allen and Son BBQ? I’m leaning toward the last.

Dean Bowers suggests the Kuralt Learning Center, a great place. But the BBC-TV want — get this — my office “probably with the
blinds shut (for what the producer describes as a “cyberspace feel”).”
This is why the French and Italians are known for high fashion and the Brits for bowlers.

Attack of the Blog: Legal Horrors in the Workplace

John Melo of the UNC Law School’s Journal of Law and Technology writes to alert us the upcoming Symposium on April 8.

What: Symposium: Attack of the Blog: Legal Horrors in the Workplace
When: April 8, 2006, 9AM – 3PM
Where: UNC Law School, Chapel Hill, NC (Maps)

About: The increased popularity and simplicity of blogs has provided employees and employers a forum to share their thoughts and ideas with the world. Those very thoughts though have potentially far reaching ramifications. A well intentioned thought could alert a competitor to internal problems within a company.

Even worse, a blog could quickly shatter investor confidence or be misconstrued to provide insider information. The 2006 JOLT symposium will explore the possible legal problems blogs could cause for both employees and employers. How can both be protected? Can and should a company encourage blogging by its employees? What, if any, are the first amendment rights issues? How can an anonymous blogger be dealt with?

Speakers:
Mark Jen, Product Manager, Plaxo
Kurt Opsahl, Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Eric Goldman, Professor, Marquette University
Ed Cone, blogger/writer

Flavor of the Future; History of ibiblio

Took a phone interview and an email interview at the same time on two different topics trying to prove I could multiprocess and move in both directions at once today.

The phone call was with Dawn Vaughan of the Herald Sun (in Durham). Dawn asked the unanswerable:

Do you think there will be significant changes in home technology — beyond advances in computer hard/software? Will we use the Internet more/differently? Will we use desktop computers, or everything handheld? Any new “intelligent” home appliances? Will we watch/listen/learn on one piece of equipment? What will it look like?

I answered that the future of home entertainment is would be life-sized fully interactive revival of Flavor of Love reruns controlled by grills and a large clock worn around the home participant’s neck.

Well, after that I tried to get serious to talk about control by voice, gesture and presence, about houses and devices learning your habits and anticipating your needs based on past behaviors, about presense being sensed by various bioprofiles, facescans, heat images, jewelry and implants, about augmentation of the body, about wires vanishing, about widespread fuelcell use. And about a fetishism of the outdoors. Much as trains are now romanticised, the outdoors will be seen as something that we need to visit to make up for the lack of contact with the unpredictable world of nature. Like trains, we’ll talk about nature and our lovely relationship to it more that we actually experience it.

At the same time, I was answering email from Glyn Moody of Linux Weekly News about Open Content (LWN is not Open Content as near as I can tell, they want you to subscribe but Glyn’s open access article is accessible openly). Glyn had done a piece on Open Access earlier and this would be a follow up.

Glyn asked about Sunsite/Metalab/ibiblio’s hosting of Linux, the Linux Documentation Project, Creative Commons, Project Gutenberg and about contributor-run digital libraries. I answered and will publish what I wrote after Glyn has his cut at making sense of it all. I’m sure he’ll do a great job based on what I read in his Open Access article.

Wayne and Wax on Mash Ups and IP – This Friday

Yugen writes to remind me that Wayne and Wax will be in town playing and talking:

What: Wayne Marshall (aka Wayne&Wax) talks about music, mash-ups and intellectual property.
Where: Freedom Forum, Carroll Hall, UNC Campus
When: 3pm Friday, March 24.

Wayne Marshall is an ethnomusicologist and musician from Boston who has written extensively about remixing, mash-up, musical innovation and copyright on his blog and the riddim method. Wayne will be talking about and giving examples of sample-based music including mash-up, and how current intellectual property laws effect the creation and spread of these genres.

DJ C owner of record labels Mashit and Beat Research will be joining Wayne to bring another perspective to the mix.

Wayne and DJ C will also be playing a show at the Local 506 in Chapel Hill on Thursday March 23.

Groklaw on UNC/RHAT Symposium

PJ has a nice article at Groklaw on the UNC/RHAT Symposium (held last November, but now available for viewing). My favorite part of the article (wish I had been able to get out to Allen and Son for BBQ with PJ):

If you enjoy the videos, here’s who to thank: the University of North Carolina, iBiblio, and more than anyone Matthew Szulik, CEO of Red Hat, who really was the force that made this conference happen. Here are his opening remarks. There are more videos there as well, but I haven’t seen them myself yet. Currently it’s available only in RealMedia, but they’re working on it, I understand, to broaden your choices. I attended the conference, by the way, and had a blast, but there were different discussions going on simultaneously, so some of this is new to me too. I expanded my concept of Groklaw because of that conference, actually. Had some great barbecue too. If you are ever invited to anything Red Hat, iBiblio or the University of North Carolina is planning, my advice is, Go.

Red Hat/UNC IP Symposium On Line Now!

Back in November, we had a gathering of experts on Intellectual Property, Creativity, and The Innovation Process sponsored by the UNC System and Red Hat. Andy Oram of O’Reilly did a great write up on the Symposium. UNC-TV taped and produced some of the talks which are streamed now from the UNC-TV site which also lists the talks and the agenda for the Symposium:

UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process

First Lady Mary Easley and Matthew Szulik, CEO of Red Hat kick off the 2005 UNC Symposium on Intellectual Property, Creativity and the Innovation Process. Szulik and others from the corporate and educational arenas gather to discuss how technological advances affect copyright and how creativity and innovation foster social, cultural, intellectual, and economic growth. Other guests include James Boyle, director for the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Edward Klaris, general counsel for The New Yorker, past UNC President Molly Broad, and others representing public domain laws.

Agenda

Opening Remarks:
Mary Easley, First Lady of North Carolina

Opening Remarks:
Matthew Szulik, CEO
Red Hat

Four Ways to Ruin a Technological Revolution
James Boyle, Director
Center for the Study of the Public Domain

Koleman Strumpf
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

When the Now is Too Long: How DRM & Old-World Copyright Fight the Future
Cory Doctorow, Novelist and European Outreach Coordinator, The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Symposium Wrap-Up – Matthew Szulik and Molly Broad

Panel Discussion at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law

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