Glyn Moody did a nice piece in the Linux Weekly News on Gutenberg 2.0: the birth of open content. Amongst the paragraphs are good bits about the early ibiblio participation in cooperative creation of open content and support of Gutenberg.
Category: Information Commons (Page 11 of 26)
Information Commons, Copyright, Censorship and/or withdrawal of public information, Libraries: Digital and other
Ken alerts us that IPv6 late-comer, Virgin Radio, is claiming that they are the first commercial radio station to simulcast using the IPv6 protoco. Unlike, WXYC and WCPE both of which have been on IPv6 since November 2004, Virgin is off the air after their servers have gone down in flames (according to their website).
They say:
These streams are temporarily unavailable.
Note that due to a serious fire, our IPv6 streams are currently down. Find our normal IPv4 ones by visiting our normal listen page.
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.
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?
Sign and Sight — Arts, Essays and Ideas from Germany — features portions of Jurgen Habermas‘ Bruno 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)
And only one slash. In an interview with Brian Runciman of the British Computer Society, the person hereafter known as Lee-Berners Tim Sir opines on the state of the Net including a note that he wishes he had done a few things differently. Dropping one slash (who cares most browers will add http:// anyhow) and that he had used the British name notation going from the more general to the more specific instead of the European/American model which goes like a mail address from specific to general and which by the way LBT Sir was very widely sided before you created the Web. Not complaining about your contributions but clarifying that the Net was well along and much established before the first http was typed. Pretty good interview overall.
At least one surprise, he wishes he had not included SGML folks:
Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance?
I would have skipped on the double slash – there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order – in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary.
Later
Going back to the idea of anything I would change, I remember Dan Connolly – who really understood SGML – asking me if HTML was SGML. I really wanted the SGML people on board so I said yes.
I should have said no – and we would have developed XML a lot sooner. This all happened at the beginning of the Web, in a pub in Edinburgh. This May there’ll be discussions in pubs in Edinburgh again, where we can talk about what we’ll need to change now – it’ll be a blast.
Thanks to Sayan for the initial pointer.
This morning on page C7 or online. In fact, a lot of news is covering Justin on this one.
JJB announces a new 0.20 release of the ibiblio-developed Open Source Multi-User Blog Environment, Lyceum.
Test it here. Download it here. And be sure to sign on the mailing list for updates and let us know your experiences with Lyceum.
Lyceum is a multi-blog derivative of WordPress, suitable for installations with 2 or 200,000 blogs!
Wayne Marshall‘s talk on Friday afternoon was partially (but not wholely) based on this paper he paper presented at Caribbean Soundscapes, New Orleans called “Mad Mad” Migration: Caribbean Circulation and the Movement of Jamaican Rhythm. There’s also a bit showing up on his blog.
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
Roger McGuinn’s CDs on Amazon are all Safe, but the Byrds and Stones get a Warning that they are issued by RIAA members according to RIAA Radar.
Black Sweater, White Cat gives details on how to use FireFox, GreaseMonkey and RIAA Radar to give you an icon that indicates whether the CDs you are purchasing on Amazon are from RIAA members or not. Only takes a few seconds to install and works great.
Be amused and be an informed consumer. (Thanks Fred).
Pew Center for the Study of Internet and American Life reports that “For many home broadband users, the internet is a primary news source.” :
By the end of 2005, 50 million Americans got news online on a typical day, a sizable increase since 2002. Much of that growth has been fueled by the rise in home broadband connections over the last four years. For a group of “high-powered” online users — early adopters of home broadband who are the heaviest internet users — the internet is their primary news source on the average day.
At the same time, the US is threatening to create a tiered Internet with positive support from FCC Chief Kevin Martin (reports /. and Networking Pipeline).
People are learning from the internet instead of watching Fox! This must be stopped (or at least further regulated and tamed)!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 CarolinaOpening Remarks:
Matthew Szulik, CEO
Red HatFour Ways to Ruin a Technological Revolution
James Boyle, Director
Center for the Study of the Public DomainKoleman Strumpf
Associate Professor, Department of Economics
University of North Carolina at Chapel HillWhen the Now is Too Long: How DRM & Old-World Copyright Fight the Future
Cory Doctorow, Novelist and European Outreach Coordinator, The Electronic Frontier FoundationSymposium Wrap-Up – Matthew Szulik and Molly Broad
Panel Discussion at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of 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
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.
Recent Comments