Accept no substitutes

Month: March 2006 (Page 3 of 4)

P2P Panel @ IP Symposium

The UNC-TV stream that is labeled Koleman Strumpf is actually a P2P panel chaired by Koleman which features John Buckman of Magnatunes.com, Gene Hoffman founder of eMusic.com, Ed Klaris of The New Yorker, Adam Toll of BigChampagne.com, Sam Yagan of eDonkey, Tor Hansen of Redeye Distribution and Yep Roc Records, and Roger McGuinn musician.

The attendees have a lot to say too. In this session, we hear from Robert Kaye of MusicBrainz, Cory Doctorow, Chris DiBona of Google, Roy Kaufman of Wiley and Sons, Laurie Racine of Center for the Public Domain, JJB of ibiblio’s Lyceum project and others I can’t identify just now.

It’s about a 2 hour stream with a bit of hollow sound, but well worth hearing what this wide variety of folks have to say.

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

Peppers + Chocolate = Good Health

In the latest health news, my favorite pleasures, hot peppers and dark chocolate, are being show to be very helpful for old men, like me. BBC (and a hundred other sources) report that hot peppers kill cancer cells in the prostate. At least in rats. The LA Times reprinted in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports that chocolate especially the darker (and better) variety helps lower cholesterol and relax your blood vessels thus decreasing the likelihood of heart attacks. Mars is marketing a new bar called, CocoaVia, designed to get the good of chocolate to us all. (Haven’t tried this stoof. The nearest listed store with it is in Cary).

They had the right idea in Chocolat.

Bound by Law? is out

Bound by Law
James Boyle of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain writes to remind us that Duke won the ACC Championship (after having lost their last regular season game to UNC) and that the Center’s Bound by Law comix book is now available:

Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has just released “BOUND BY LAW?” – a comic book on copyright and creativity — specifically, documentary film. It is being published today
–March 15 under a Creative Commons License. The comic, by Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins explores the benefits of copyright in a digital age, but also the threats to cultural history
posed by a permissions culture, and the erosion of fair useand the public domain. You can read or download the whole thing for free or buy hard copies (*on soft paper) from Amazon.

Will a spiky-haired, camera-toting super-heroine… restore decency and common sense to the world of creative endeavor? -Paul Bonner, The Herald-Sun

Bound By Law lays out a sparkling, witty, moving and informative story about how the eroded public domain has made documentary filmmaking into a minefield.
-Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing.net

Future of Libraries (LAUNC-CH)

At the LAUNC-CH conference on the Future of (Academic) Libraries. John Price Wilkins is the keynote speaker. Future is defined as 2025.
(live blog)
Google guy from the G5. “what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” John wants to establish himself as a collections guy. He was a UVa as a late Medievalist. (spelling).
In 10 years, libraries will cease to be organized around print. Research libraries now have large locally held collections, but not so much in the future. Small high use collections and special unique collections. Only a few coordinated centers. Print on demand as people need it. abandons his slides.
Local collections, shared repositories, handy medium (should be media i think).
Open Content Initiative and Google mentioned in passing.
what will a research library be:
collaborative spaces, conduits for licensed content (ouch), partners with faculty and students, an archive (curating the intellectual and creative record), publishers (libraries will be come publishers), advocates (for whom? for a new IP landscape. how to do rich collections whilst paying licensing that is rapidly rising and consuming library budgets?). shows chart of rising of prices for major journals consuming the entire library budget.
insuring access and connecting users with information. constantly asking what it means to be a librarians. sustain the record and to grow it.
now his digital activities. quotes ross atkinson’s reference to janus (the two faced god). institutional repository effort. go to scholarly publishing office at umich.edu props to ncsu and susan nutter for their work on publishing there.
now google partnership at UMich. 2002 talks with Larry Page (UMich alum). non-destructive conversion, high quality images (surrogates). a copy for UMich and UMich in a collaborative venture.
complex slide on file formats. benchmarking and standards. similar process to Google. what UMich gets:
600dpi ITU G4 for print
300 dpi jpeg2000 for illustration
naming conventions
OCR
checksums
production notes
barcode id
google has an ongoing improvement process
are these perfect images? they will serve in preservation (says UMich, but none of the other G5).
microfilm was no substitute, but he feels that scanning is pretty close.
collaboration with EU libraries. changing the terrain for their users. UMich is moving materials to Amazon and seeing sales, High use online does not mean high physical sales thru amazon. (booksurge and lightning source as instiprint examples). academic titles are really looooong. now a Uof Chicago Press book. restoring material to print. cheaper than printing on your home printer
opportunity to do more with this content. collaborative initiatives, added value, enhancements.
Why do this? To create a great public good (see AAP speech by Mary Sue Coleman — to a hostile audience).
libraries make it possible to discover knowledge.
clauses in the google contract. to have an to provide access and to place in third party repository in the digital library federation.
future is about doing this as a shared effort. a number of copies physically distributed with shared cost and shared curation.
historical literature in science has been much bigger than anticipated. JPW: we believed in this forever. (his presidentr

publish
digitize
preserve
reshape our spaces
reshape our services
and have the right staff to support them (retain individuals of distinction)
“building a bridge as you cross it”? riff on this.

revolution and not reform needed to do essential work.

concludes with ranganathan’s library rules:
books are for use
every reader has his book
every book has its reader
save the time of the reader
the library is a growing organism

questions:
thanked and asked to talk about UMich services that will be added
mike keller talked about 8 services that stanford will add
build out content in as open a way as possible
barcodes are for digital object identifier and resolving urls on the fly based on that. building a digital library with input from UMich staff. right now text is better than images. natural language for automatic summarization say.
are you only digitizing public domain? no everything. how do you get around copyright? they don’t. google is being sued. UMich is indemnified and google claims this is a transformative use. the mere act of copying is not a violation (says UMich) the use is the question. The use by UMich looks legal. Backfile purchases from Wiley and Elsevier allows UMich materials access.
Books from retiring faculty? Can that be used to expand content?
Oxford allowed open access but not reprint sales (for example).
natasha disagrees that we always believed in this forever has certainly been JPW’s career so don’t be so coy about it.
now the symposium on digitization. fear of mass digitization (or large scale). cliff lynch says we are all working on large scale digitization and are all facing unforseen problems.
the perfect is the enemy of the good notes JPW. when is compromise too great? doing it (digitizing) well now is important. poor capture will misrepresent information. incomplete digitization is not acceptable.
2 pt type as a std? too fine for reality.
questions winding down and me getting stuck on typing.
costs of special collections if they are the future? specials are usually paid for by gifts and grants instead of base budget. JPW: costs are outstripping budgets and we need to fund digital preservation and to stop doing some things. it will be awkward and tough. libraries say yes to too many things. there will be substitutions and something will be dropped. dropping duplicate subscriptions will happen.
unc librarian sarah malick: we will have to shift resources from print to electronic. cites cardcatalog shift as an example. librarians can recreate. but saying goodby to the card catalog was incremental but the next changes will be even faster.
JPW: university presses need to participate and to change.
duke monographic cataloging section head: how much time is spent in tech services that is now done by catalogers? catalogers are very busy now.
JPW: split public domain and owned to work. shift from just cataloging to working on rights. tech services are the read guard of the library profession.

Digital Domain on Wikipedia

A while back I had a chat and exchanged some email with Randy Stross, author of the NYTimes Digital Domain column, about Wikipedia. I may have been amusing and even on target, but I didn’t make the article. Randy had a much better source in Jimmy Wales and that lead to a good article that saw ink today.
I disagree with Randy and his headline writer, who wrote Anonymous Source Is Not the Same as Open Source, and Jeff Bates, who is quoted as saying that “Every Open Source project has a benevolent dictator who takes responsibility” and that “everyone puts their name on it.” Well, yes the headline writer is right, but not quite. Open Source projects that I’ve been in and around hardly ever contend with questions of anonymity at all. I mean, it never comes up. It may or may not be the case that it is good or bad in Open Source to be anonymous. It’s just that like pigs flying it never happens.
Writing though has a different history, be it history, fiction, reporting, or even the “Federalist Papers.” Or encyclopedian. Or Wikipedia and its kin. Somehow the consequences in this kind of writing begs for the sometimes covert cover of anonymity or pseudo-anonymity. It has for ages and ages. I don’t expect that to change. Anonymous writer or sourced author doesn’t make the writing more true. Ask Jonathan Frey or Nadijj or Belle de Jour or Steven Glass or Jason Blair or …

Beverly McIver to NC Museum of Art

Jane Tyndall of Tyndall Galleries writes that the North Carolina Museum of Art has recently acquired the triptych Reminiscing by Beverly McIver (I wrote a little about McIver’s show at Jane’s gallery last year).

Quoting Jane who quotes Preview: The Magazine of the North Carolina Museum of Art, March/April 2006:

“The Museum has recently acquired several new works of art that expand the scope and diversity of the 20th century and contemporary collections and also reflect the global, cross-cultural dialogue taking place in the art
world today. The new pieces include painting, photography and sculpture by nationally and internationally known artists and artists with North Carolina connections. …

“Beverly McIver grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and now lives in Arizona. Since the early 1990s, she has examined racial stereotypes in an ongoing series of expressionist self-portraits. The paintings deal with her African American identity and how she perceives her role in a society that historically has marginalized minorities and women. Often McIver paints herself in blackface – a reference to her childhood desire to become a professional clown, and also a way to confront and reclaim stereotypes head-on by changing the conventional clown white-face to black.

“Reminiscing, a self-portrait in triplicate, reveals its subject from three different vantage points – she stares off into the distance, looks down with despondence and then turns her head to the side, never meeting the viewer’s
gaze. Failing to tuck her hair up under her wig and exposing her emotional disarray, McIver paints a woman disheveled in appearance and in mood. This portrayal shows McIver striving to come to terms with her mother’s recent death. Without emphasizing it, the artist has again painted herself in
blackface, for she is rarely out of character, even at times of personal mourning.”

Blooker v Booker

I love Bob Young’s gumption. True, I’m judging the Blooker Prize for his lulu.com venture, but even if I weren’t I’d be admiring his take on how the Blooker will overtake the Booker (now know as Man Booker) in a few years (see the Telegraph UK for one particularly zesty Young performance).
As I look over the press, I see that the Brits love the Blooker. Or at least the Brit press seems to. Lots of coverage from the “small island nation” which has landed two blooks in the contest — one by a callgirl and one on Bacon Egg Chips and Beans.
I am waiting, by the way, for a contest for female writers called the Woman Booker Prize.

Unedited, Unreviewed Notes from Consortium for School Networking Symposium

Open content and open access in Africa etc
Including the flora and fauna of Peru

Egbe osifo-dawodu

Jordan hill railway station = 1 milth wikipedia entry
Within one hour that entry was edited 100 times

Jimbo to talk on how open tech facilitates k-12 education

Kids do remixes everyday

Free dulture and the future of education

(jimbo straight from London)

van doren quote on britanica

aliu mamadu jallo

guaka wikipedian in mali (?)

wikimedia foundation

partners (?)

wikistats 1 mil in English

wikipedia = nyt + latimes + wsj

wikibooks – free books written

12k modules (or chapters)

also wikijunior

wikinews

wikisource

wikispecies

wikiquote

wiktionary

what do you mean by “free” free as in speech rather than free as in beer. Nods to gnu etc

stallman’s four freedoms. To copy. To modify. To redistribute it. to redistribute modded version
commercial or noncommercial

free culture – textbooks deprive us of control of the edu process

collaborate, mod and share

quality – cites wiki v britanica from nature

two views of wikipedia

emergent phenomenon
community of users

jimbo says wikipedians have old fashion values not about quasidarminian process (no ants here)
a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers

if emergent then trust systems and rep measures like ebay
users are tiny and have no power

reputation is a natural outgrown of himan interactions
users are powerful and must be respected

edit history tell that over 50% of all edits are done by 0.7% of the users (615 at last count)

the most active 1.9% (1746) have done 72.8% of all edits

real time peer review – watch list and page history

all the tech existed 6 years before wikipedia. Wikipedia is a social innovation

look at votes for deletion page

google test example of “twisted Issues”

radically open

restaurant example of steakhouse without knives

why not voting to achieve neutrality

angela as an aristocrat within wikipedia
jimbo as the monarch = jimbo is the queen of England (always gets a laugh)

nazi math problem – jimbo would ban folks if inappropriate

wikipedians are very flexible

respondent – Katherine moyle from .au canberra edu

FLOSS conferences claimed to be for geeks and by geeks. She says that this is the first for and by edu

Open software open access open content and open standards

Indiana will deploy widely

FLOSS says edu requires at least two options be explored

Collaborative environment with FLOSS

A bit on GPL (copyleft = right to copy in place) knowledge is not property but common
Social construction of technologies

Hacking is good like chipping onions vs cracking

Mix of FLOSS talk and cultural studies. Artifacts, project, process,

Questions: will be on a website

Tampa bay like jimbo. What is the diff between managed learning and personal learning environments?

How to engage with publishers etc? German speaker’s 50% for population higher. But the trad ency is selling more! Hybridized b-model. Services etc.

Sarasota person – considered expanding into lesson plans using wiki say. But how successful is learnNC? Jimbo says moodle and other examples and H2O (jimbo is a berkman fellow this year)

Challenge something said about teachers. Teachers are not prisoners of the textbooks. How to break the culture of textbooks?

Hargroves about moving from the 19th century to 21st century. Fom factory/prison model to an active learning model. Says moyle

Asking about we and us. And wikibooks as we creating for them. We’re the bbc and the community is out there. Wikibooks is they because jimbo isn’t involved. Wikipedians write for themselves.

Azimov’s foundation the encyclopedians?

Helen king shuttleworth foundation
Funds tuxlab ubantu and edubantu and freetoaster

Power to innovate and to deliver

Barbara tartano of ny public library
About open access

buttolph collection of menus
what a name

phoenix wang of Hewlett foundation
educomments and conexxions (fom rice) and sakai
open courseware in 55 universities worldwide
google announcement next week

Hewlett wish list
Innovation and adoption(how to be google like to remove burden of learning from the user). So design the tech to fit

Siloing of content. How to get collections to interact? (metdata) (one stop shopping like google and amazon) federated search

Global knowledge sharing (multi-lingual,translation, localization). Could content be on a wiki for translation? Or better (I think) CVS.

Pushing creative commons licenses (at wgbh, etc)

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