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Monday, April 04, 2005 |
Righting Human Rights. With Libya, Cuba and Sudan among the countries having served on the U.N. Human Rights Commission, critics have called the panel a mockery. Mary Robinson talks about Kofi Annans plans to reform the U.N. [WNYC New York Public Radio]
11:38:20 PM 
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The Women's View.
The American Prospect has published a very comprehensive piece by Jodi Enda about the abortion debate. You’ve probably read bits and pieces of it elsewhere, but if you’re looking for one article that covers the history as well as the current politics, this could be it.
[ms.musings]
10:46:25 PM
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The (conversational) NY Times.
The Annotated NY Times is an ambitious RSS/blog-aggregating concept, let's call it, what, a "vertical aggregator"? The concept apparently is to aggregate all of the stories from one source (the NY Times) and then aggregate all of the posts from the blogosphere that reference those stories and then offer lots of ways to slice and dice the feeds they use in that aggregation. A wonderfully creative blueprint for what the NY Times (and others) can incorporate into their site in the coming months. (The NYT can even monitize this approach with advertising, something the "annotated" folks will likely be defending in court, if they try to do.) Best thing about it: the honking list of RSS feeds. (Robert Scoble says he prefers "Memeorandum" as it offers news from more sources.)
(via Steve Rubel)
[rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog]
9:56:18 PM
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Low-Cost Laptops for Kids in Need.
Nicholas Negroponte and some MIT colleagues are working to help hundreds of millions of kids in developing countries. Their idea is to create rugged, internet- and multimedia-capable laptop computers that cost $100 apiece.
[Wired News]
MIT Media Lab: $100 Laptop.
The MIT Media Lab is launching a new program to develop a $100 laptop -- a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children.
What is the $100 Laptop, really? The $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop, which initially is achieved either by rear projecting the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink (developed at the MIT Media Lab). In addition, it will be rugged, use innovative power (including wind-up), be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz, 1GB, 1 Megapixel. The cost of materials for each laptop is estimated to be approximately $90, which includes the display, as well as the processor and memory, and allows for $10 for contingency or profit.
[unmediated]
7:34:22 AM
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Why Our Media matters.
Many blogs have posted about Our Media, a new site, courtesy of the Internet Archive, that provides free storage and bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text and software. If you haven't checked it out yet you should, but I thought I'd post a note about why I think this site is more important that you may at first realize.
As you know, creative people often run into problems due to copyright. We casually refer to "illegal art," but the fact is that many of the problems artists encounter have little with do with the actual law. To take a recent example, Warner Brothers recently shut down screenings of Brad Neely's Wizard People, Dear Reader not by suing, but by threatening to cut off ties with the theaters that screened it.
Similarly, documentary filmmakers who use short clips or stills without licensing them can't show their work on TV or in mainstream theaters—not because the law states they have to clear all this stuff, but because the gatekeepers require it. (See my old post about the troubles documentarians have with rights clearances.)
Our Media offers something that creators who make fair use of copyrighted works have needed for a long time coming: a genuinely alternative means of distribution. Jeff Krulik's documentary Hitler's Hat has shown at festivals and won all kinds of praise, but he can't show it in mainline theaters because, like most documentary filmmakers, he couldn't afford to clear rights to the historical footage.
Now, thanks to Our Media, people like Krulik have a place where their works can be shown. Of course, this doesn't immunize them from legal threats. (Rights holders threaten to sue all the time, of course, but that doesn't mean they'd actually take the case to court, let alone win.) And when the fateful day comes and Our Media gets a DMCA takedown notice from some company claiming copyright infringement, the site will have to deal with the same issues that all internet service providers deal with. But it's a safe bet that you'd rather have the people behind Our Media hear your case--people like Lawrence Lessig and Brewster Kahle--than your typical web host. And when the Our Media folks do throw their weight behind artists facing unfair legal threats, the site could will be a serious counter to an increasingly censorius cultural environment. Internet muscle and the light of publicity saved DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album and now, with Our Media, it could save all of ours.
[Stay Free! Daily]
7:33:38 AM
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The Best 90 Minutes of My Life. Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore expounds on the power of the mix tape, from cassettes blasting through boomboxes to celebrity iTunes playlists. From Wired magazine. [Wired News]
7:33:26 AM
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