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Monday, October 04, 2004 |
Massive Victory for Copyfighters (Donna Wentworth).
Cory has very big news, and puts it best:
For years now, progressive elements and copyfighters have been trying to get the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization to start thinking about ways of promoting creativity and development instead of just IP -- to get the organization to see that its raison d'etre is a better world, and that stronger IP laws is just one way of accomplishing that -- and that IP only works sometimes.
We've been foiled at every turn by the maximalists, the movies studios and the trademark offices, the patent-cops and the recording industry lobbyists and the IP lawyers' associations.
Which is why this is such good news: at the general session of the WIPO in Geneva this weekend, the Assembly as adoped a decision to put development and the promotion of creativity front-and-center in its goals. That means that from now on, WIPO isn't an organization that blindly supports more IP no matter what, but rather one that seeks to improve the world by whatever tool is best suited to the job.
More information available here; previous Copyfight coverage here and here.
[Copyfight]
10:21:48 PM 
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The art of reBlogging.
Some of my favourite bloggers of the moment are reBloggers.
They use ReBlog, a tool that facilitates the process of filtering and republishing relevant content from many RSS feeds. reBloggers subscribe to their favorite feeds, preview the content, and select their favorite posts. These posts are automatically published through their favorite blogging software.
The system --publicly available as an Open Source project-- was developed by Michael Frumin for Eyebeam R&D to create a community site focused mainly on art and technology, but here and there are posts about politics, alternative comics, or society.
It might sound simple, but you don't just select a given content, you also select the way the reblogged author presented that content, the way it commented or illustrated it (though the system gives you the possibility to add pictures, text, or comments.)
The challenge then is to create a rhythm between strong visuals and interesting texts, while mixing the topics in an equilibrated "montage."
The system systematically gives credit to the original post, but not mechanically as the software allows the reBlogger to choose the link to use for "top of the post" status.
The Eyebeam ReBlog invites guests to try the system during a couple of weeks or so. Tom Moody and Tim Shey wrote their thoughts about the experience and another guest reblogger, Beverly Tang, said it all when she relaunched her own blog as a reBlog.
Related post: unmediated: new blog. [Smart Mobs]
10:10:12 PM
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File-sharing debaters swap harsh words, by Stefanie Olson, CNET News.com.
You've purposely destroyed P2P networks with bogus
files--ones that, once downloaded on a user's machine, search out other
copyrighted files on the hard drive and destroy them, said Michael
Weiss, CEO of Morpheus-owner StreamCast Networks, to co-panelist Marc
Morgenstern, vice president and general manager of Overpeer, whose
technology helps protect record labels' copyrights.
Morgenstern replied: That has nothing to do with us. We make it
difficult for people to access that file without paying for it.
Yet Lee Jaffe, president of Altnet, persisted: You destroy the music;
just admit it. And an audience member added to the tension by directly
asking Morgenstern whether his company spoofs the hashes, or encryption
techniques, on Altnet files to limit the copying of copyrighted music.
This is a discreet activity authorized by the content owners,
Morgenstern said, without answering directly. We're engaged in legal
activity.
1:37:52 PM
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STATIC OVER BANDWIDTH
For almost 50 years, TV stations have had a valuable slice of
the airwaves
almost entirely to themselves. Soon, however, their gated community could
become considerably less exclusive. By summer 2005, the FCC plans to issue
rules permitting unlicensed use of vacant TV channels for connecting to
high-speed networks, transmitting e-mails and linking up home offices.
Despite a promise from FCC staff not to allow interference with TV the fine
print of the FCC's proposal could pose some threats. The threat of
interference is particularly worrisome because of the switch to digital
transmission. Traditional analog transmissions are reasonably tolerant of
interference and often absorb signal conflicts with little more than some
snow or ghosting on the viewers' screens. Digital pictures, however, can be
completely obliterated by even a small amount of interference.
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Bill McConnell]
(free access for Benton's Headlines subscribers)
12:37:02 PM
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Geeks Take on the Mississippi. Wired News takes a trip down the historic Great River Road that winds along the full length of the mighty Mississippi. The route along 'Ol' Man River' is surprisingly rich in techie tinkerers. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
7:28:36 AM
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Rip, Mix and Learn.
Alan's has been writing a lot lately about employing all of these wonderful new technologies to teach students how to "Rip, Mix and Learn" and this presentation he gave a couple of weeks ago has me thinking a lot about that concept. It was at I-Law that I first heard the concept from Lawrence Lessig who talked about "Rip, Mix and Burn" in the context of copyright. It intrigued me then, and now that Alan's making it even more accessible, it's even more intriguing.
I think blogging is a basic form of "Rip, Mix and Learn" (RML). Just like I'm doing right now, I'm ripping and idea from Alan and others, mixing it up with my own experience and reality, and writing about it as a way to clarify and learn. And really, it is the writing part that forces me to organize these thoughts and give some form to them. It's when the learning coalesces.
Today, Alan writes about RML with RSS as he's building combined feeds with Blogdigger. The "rip" is to take feeds from a number of different sources, "mix" them into one feed, and "learn" from the results. The easy example for students is to create a number of search feeds for the same terms from various sources (Bloglines, Feedster, Google News etc.) and then stick them all together at Blogdigger.
(Continued at Weblogg-ed News) [unmediated]
7:27:15 AM
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