Slashdot Mirror

rumint asks: "I am working on a software utility that I want to distribute freely. Unfortunately, there is a wide variety of nearly unintelligible software licenses (unless you are a lawyer). Of course there is the GPL, but I'm not sure it fits everyone's needs. Is there a Creative Commons equivalent for software licenses? If not, does some newly minted law school graduate want to put one together and contribute to humanity?"

Jason Scott writes "Hi, this is Jason Scott, director of the BBS Documentary, a 4 year project to tell the story of the dial-up bulletin board systems of the 70s, 80s and 90s. The documentary's out, for sale, and is completely Creative Commons licensed. But like most documentaries, there's tons of stuff left on the cutting room floor. And that just won't do. I'm happy to announce that I have partnered with archive.org to present what will be hundreds of hours of interviews online. The BBS Documentary Interview Collection will be extended edits of the 205 interviews I conducted, presented as video and audio files, along with ZIP archives of all the photos and supporting materials for that interview. And of course, every minute is Creative Commons licensed as well. It's going to take me upwards of half a year to edit and upload the half-terabyte of files; I hope people watch a few hours here and there to get an even deeper knowledge of the history of the BBS, or maybe even make a documentary of their own."

FleaPlus writes "The Public Library of Science and International Society for Computational Biology have published the inaugural issue of PLoS Computational Biology, an open-access journal dedicated to studies which 'further our understanding of living systems at all scales through the application of computational methods.' All works published in the journal are to be released under a Creative Commons Attribution License. The founding editors have some comments on the launch."

Ninwa writes "Google has launched Google Sitemaps. It seems to be a service that allows webmasters to define how often their sites' content is going to change, to give Google a better idea of what to index. It uses some basic XML as the method of submitting a sitemap. More information on the protocol is available in an FAQ. What's most interesting is that Google is licensing the idea under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license. According to the Google Blog, this is being done '...so that other search engines can do a better job as well. Eventually we hope this will be supported natively in webservers (e.g. Apache, Lotus Notes, IIS).' They even offer an open source client in Python."

lesinator writes "On Monday the 28th the US Library of Congress is holding the eighth lecture in its series on Managing Knowledge and Creativity in a Digital Context. Previous speakers include David Weinberger on blogging, Brewster Kahle - founding member of archive.org and the wayback machine, and Lawrence Lessig on intellectual property and the creative commons. After the lecture questions will be taken from the audience and the internet. C-Span will be broadcasting the lecture live at 6:30 PM EST, and also has archives of previous lectures. Audio archives of previous lecture are available at Audible.com in the Selected Free Media section."

tres3 writes "In an interview with the O'Reilly Network Mr. Lessig discusses many current issues that may have future legal implications. He starts with MGM's request for Certiorari in the Grokster case. His conclusion is that ReplayTV was forced out of business by a legal challenge, not a legal victory. Lessig continues on to discuss, among other things, The Creative Commons and their new Sampling License and how it may affect the way that some movies and music, that contain samples from other sources, are made in the future. From the article: 'So the same act of creativity in some sense, you know, taking, creating, mixing out of what other people do, is legal in the text world and illegal in the digital media world.'"

tres3 writes "In an interview with the O'Reilly Network Mr. Lessig discusses many current issues that may have future legal implications. He starts with MGM's request for Certiorari in the Grokster case. His conclusion is that ReplayTV was forced out of business by a legal challenge, not a legal victory. Lessig continues on to discuss, among other things, The Creative Commons and their new Sampling License and how it may affect the way that some movies and music, that contain samples from other sources, are made in the future. From the article: 'So the same act of creativity in some sense, you know, taking, creating, mixing out of what other people do, is legal in the text world and illegal in the digital media world.'"

RichiH writes "Most of you have probably heard that science journals are getting more and more expensive. In hard numbers, 215% increase in price over the last fifteen years. What proves a major problem for libraries and interested individuals is great for the publishers. Reed Elsevier, with about 1700 scientific magazines the leading publisher, had a profit margin of 33.8% in 2003. With most research which is published, the taxpayers get the bill while the publishers get the money. So now for the good news: People are starting to fight this. Creative Commons is a good way, for example. Additionally, there are several magazines available which are based on a author-pays basis. If this sounds like a strange idea, think again. If Cell prints an article by you, you are charged $1000 for the first and $250 for each additional graphic you include. And this is for a reader-pays magazine! With PLoS Biology, the author pays $1500 for the whole article and the reader gets the magazine for free on the internet. Biomed Central lists 100 free magazines while the Directory of Open Access Journals lists an amazing 1425. I for one considered getting the $160 a year print subscription of PLoS just Because."

chrisspurgeon writes "The folks at Creative Commons are rolling out a new project aimed at improving the dissemination of scientific publications and data. The National Institutes of Health is already proposing mandated Open Access to all NIH-funded research, and many scientists welcome the free redistribution of their papers, they just don't know the legal details of how to do it. The Science Commons project will take on the copyright problems unique to scientists (things like pre and post prints, and electronic vs. paper journal distribution)."

chrisspurgeon writes "The folks at Creative Commons are rolling out a new project aimed at improving the dissemination of scientific publications and data. The National Institutes of Health is already proposing mandated Open Access to all NIH-funded research, and many scientists welcome the free redistribution of their papers, they just don't know the legal details of how to do it. The Science Commons project will take on the copyright problems unique to scientists (things like pre and post prints, and electronic vs. paper journal distribution)."

Erno_Rubaiyat asks: "The educational foundation that I work for is preparing to release some software. We are committed to releasing it with an Open Source license, but are unsure what license to use. I was curious if anyone had considered or compared the Sakai license to the Creative Commons licenses? I like the Sakai license because it is so simple, but does it leave any obvious areas open for abuse? As a side note: we are including several packages that are licensed under the LGPL and the GPL. Are there any pitfalls that we should be aware of while licensing our 'original' work with a different license than these components?"

sootman writes "Eric Meyer, the man behind the famous Complex Spiral (CSS) Demo page, is at it again. He has created S5, "a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript." As he says, "With one file, you can run a complete slide show and have a printer-friendly version as well. The markup used for the slides is very simple, highly semantic, and completely accessible." So it can be used for PowerPoint-like work and the show responds to a variety of input--you can go to the next slide by pressing Return, Right, Space, etc. It is being released under a Creative Commons license. So fire up our favorite standards-compliant browser and check it out!"

13.7Billion Years writes "Former RIAA CEO Hilary Rosen has written a piece in Wired extolling the virtues of Lawrence Lessig's Creative Commons licensing, providing such juicy tidbits as 'I'm still cynical about its origins, but I've come to love Creative Commons,' and 'the industry ought to embrace Creative Commons as an agile partner providing tools for new ways to do business.' She's not quite ready to pooh-pooh the current all-or-nothing licensing regime just yet but this sounds like good progress."

An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."

An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."

An anonymous reader writes "In this month's issue of Wired Magazine, there is an included CD featuring songs from The Beastie Boys, David Byrne, among others. The unique thing about the CD is that all of the tracks are released under Creative Commons Licences, making them legal to share."

cel4145 writes "The Professional Writing Program at Purdue University recently began the Open Source Development and Documentation Project (OSDDP) where students and instructors across multiple sections of business and technical writing are producing documentation for and about open source applications (see the press release or a mirror). The community and project are modeled after the open source development model and based on service learning principles. For example, students are already working on end user documentation and case study analysis for Drupal and market research and analysis for OpenOffice. Completed texts will be published using a Creative Commons license."

samuel4242 writes " Some of the Creative Commons folks wrapped a skin around the Internet Archive to create the P2P-Politics site filled with ads about this election. You've heard of this election, right? It's an interesting spin on the notion of P2P because the ads themselves are cached on the Internet Archives big servers, but email forwards links from P to P. Sort of like passing a pointer instead of the data structure. Some of the ads are thoughtful, some include stars, and some are a bit scary. For some reason, there seem to be very few from the Bush supporters and it's anyone's guess why."

BearJ writes "Yahoo is reporting that Creative Commons is set to launch a new copyright licence in the UK that will allow for 'remix' use. Technically this use of another's works are illegal. Next month's Wired magazine will contain a CD licenced under this scheme, so sampling is permitted. More info on the Creative Commons site."

Last Thursday you got to Ask Questions of the Green Party's US Presidential nominee, David Cobb He answered 12 of the most highly rated comments. A thanks goes to Mr.Cobb for taking the time to explain some of his positions to us. Read on to see what he has to say.

Switching (Score:5, Interesting) by MikeMack (788889)

If I was a Republican or Democrat, what would you say to me to make me switch to the Green Party?

The Green Party offers both Republicans and Democrats the true essence of what each of their parties should be. For Republicans, the Greens offer true conservatism, which means keeping the government out of your personal business, out of your bedroom and out of your library. A true conservative would never support the so-called "Patriot Act;" nor would a true patriot for that matter. A true political conservative would recognize that public resources, such as forests, parks and oceans, should be conserved for use and enjoyment by future generations.

For Democrats, Greens are the party which champions what Democrats used to: support for working people and people of color and protection of the environment.

Both Democrats and Republicans don't represent the people of this country, they represent the transnational corporations who line their pockets and make their election to public office possible.

How do you avoid corruption? (Score:5, Interesting) by kwiqsilver (585008)

It's commonly accepted that power corrupts politicians. The Greens are always speaking out against politicians who sell favors to their corporate buddies or other special interests. But the Green party also espouses a system where the government strictly regulates most industry. How do you propose to have such strong government controlled regulation, without falling victim to the corruption inherent in a bureaucratic system?

The bureaucratic system may well be corrupt but what we really need to address is the corruption in the White House and in Congress-that's who makes the laws and the decisions which support the transnational corporate empire. The halls of Congress are filled with lobbyists representing the international profiteers who play Congress like puppets on strings. Although, I suppose, instead of strings it's campaign contributions which make the puppets dance.

If we take the private money out of our public elections and away from our public officials, we'll go a long way in addressing corruption and ensuring that we truly have a government by the people. We also need to strengthen public meeting laws so Dick Cheney and Enron can never again meet in private to determine the energy needs of this country. We also have to stop the revolving door between industry, Congress and the White House. There have to be much tighter restrictions on public servants going over to private industry.

Here goes again (Score:5, Insightful) by MORTAR_COMBAT! (589963)

I'll ask the same questions I posed to the Libertarian candidate:

Would you approve of, and what would you think would be the results of, the following election reforms:

1. Abolition of electoral college, president is elected by simple popular vote.

The Electoral College is an historical, anti-democratic and racist anachronism which needs to be abolished. If you're wondering why it is racist, remember that when it was created, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person to determine representation, yet they couldn't vote. Therefore, slave states had greater representation in the Electoral College-as if counting any human being as a portion of person wasn't insulting enough.

However, replacing the Electoral College with what you call a "simple popular vote" really doesn't go far enough. We need to replace it with Instant Runoff Voting to ensure that the winner of the popular vote wins with a majority of that vote. Instant Runoff Voting is a voting system, used to elect the mayor of London, the president of Ireland and many office-holders in Australia, which allows you to rank candidates in order of preference. If someone wins a majority of first choice votes, the election is over. If no one wins in the first round, the candidate with the fewest first choice votes is eliminated and a runoff is held instantly taking into account the second choice votes of people who voted for the eliminated candidates.

Instant Runoff Voting will be used in San Francisco this November and a number of other cities and counties have approved of using it or are considering doing so. Instant Runoff Voting, or IRV, solves the perceived "spoiler" problem because you can vote for all the candidates you like; you don't have to make a lesser-evil choice. I encourage people to learn more about IRV at Center for Voting and Democracy.

2. Federal mandate that electoral votes from a state be split proportional to the popular vote within that state. (e.g. if California splits 60-40 Kerry-Bush, then their electoral votes are split 60-40 as well). This helps move away from the very brittle "all or nothing" electoral system, where as few as 1 fraudulent or defrauded vote can change the outcome of the national election for president.

I believe we should move rapidly towards Instant Runoff Voting, as outlined above, rather than tinker with an anachronistic relic.

3. Constitutional amendment granting naturalised citizens the eligibility to run for president or vice president. This would allow for the 2008 ticket for the new political party, C.O.P. (Cast Of Predator) to field Arnold Schwartzeneggar and Jesse Venutra as their presidential ticket.

Democracy should be as inclusive as possible. While I don't necessarily find myself opposed to this proposed amendment, I believe there are much more profound and necessary reforms, such as Instant Runoff Voting and proportional representation, where we should focus our energy and attention.

Our country is made up of immigrants. Your place of birth should not disqualify someone from serving as president or vice president.

Lastly a question: is the democratic system as instituted in the United States hopelessly mired in a two-party stranglehold, leaving corporate interest in defacto charge of the discussion? Is legal election reform necessary, or even possible?

Election reform is absolutely necessary, it is possible and we are being successful in changing our system for the better. Instant Runoff Voting is part of the equation. So are open and unrestricted debates, free media for candidates on the public airwaves which we own, less burdensome access to the ballot, proportional representation and public financing of campaigns. A number of states, including Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona, have been successful in implementing campaign finance reform.

We also have to strike right at the heart of the corporate empire and rescind the human rights which have mistakenly been conferred on corporations.

Voting Rights for Noncitizens? (Score:5, Interesting)by anzha (138288)

Thank you for your time. Recently in San Francisco, Matt Gonzalez, a popular local Green Party politico, has been pushing for the ability for noncitizens to vote in some of the local elections. While there are other places that offer this long before SF, it seems as though this erodes the differences between having citizenship or not. Rather than expanding the franchise this way, why not work to streamline the process for getting citizenship and encourage people to seek it?

Can you expound and explain a bit on your stance on this?

Matt Gonzalez has championed the ability of non-citizens who have kids in school to be able to vote in School Board elections. This makes sense and we should support it.

I would like to see the process streamlined so that undocumented workers, who are here and are paying taxes and contributing to our society, can obtain citizenship more simply and easily. We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.

Mainstream Perception (Score:5, Interesting) by Locky (608008)

The Green Party is best known for its progressive policies on the environment, however its other policies are often shrouded by this, most people not knowing where the Green Party stands on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

What do you think might be the best approach to educate the masses about the rest of Green Party polices?

Greens work both within and outside of the electoral system for genuine democracy, social and racial justice, a healthy environment and for peace and non-violence. We have to march both in the streets and into the ballot box. If we do one and not the other, we won't be successful. All great social movements have used this approach.

Greens believe in freedom and privacy. We support same-sex marriage and reproductive choice.

Copyright and Digital Law (Score:5, Interesting) by Nick Fury (624480)

Obviously we here at slashdot are a bit on the techie side. I know that I have personally watched my rights being taken away from me over the past few years. Mainly my right to fair use. Under current law it is illegal to watch CSS encoded DVDs under Linux or any other Open Source operating system. What are you and your party's feelings on loosening certain restrictions to make the act of fair use a right again.

Also, on the concept of intellectual property and copyright laws. What are your party's and your feelings on the current trend of extending the length of copyright terms? Do you have any plans to reverse the current trend or perhaps to set the lengths back to their original terms?

Nick, first let's look at what the Green Party's platform says about open source: copyrights:

"10. The Green Party supports protection of software (free or proprietary) by means of the copyright. We strongly oppose granting of software patents. Mathematical algorithms are discovered, not invented, by humans; therefore, they are not patentable. The overwhelming majority of software patents cover algorithms and should never have been awarded, or they cover message formats of some kind, which are essentially arbitrary. Format patents only exist to restrain competition, and the harm falls disproportionately on programmers who work independently or for the smallest employers."

Greens favor information flows that come from the grassroots and empower the grassroots. Excellent examples include free/open-source software, open document formats, and the Creative Commons Licenses. We recognize that creativity and productiveness do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, most innovations build on earlier innovations. Creators and producers should be entitled to seek financial compensation for their work - or not, as they choose - but to wall their work off from public access for unreasonable lengths of time is, well, unreasonable.

For most of the history of the US Patents and Copyrights Office, most patent applications were denied. Most "inventions" didn't meet the triple test of being novel, useful/valuable, and not obvious to "someone skilled in the art." Patents that were granted lasted 12 years which was considered to be a third of an invention's useful life. Today, the patent office rubber stamps just about anything. We don't need a new policy, we need the old policy. Let's give standing to all stakeholders to challenge and strike down mistaken or overly broad patents, or patents granted despite the existence of prior art. (Besides genetic patents being a particularly vile abuse of corporate power, genes are, by definition, prior art. We oppose the genetic modification of organisms, as well, but that's another topic.) There's also a place for an eminent domain process for striking down a patent when there is an overriding public interest, as in the case of absurdly overpriced life-saving drugs.

In copyrights, as in patents, we favor not a new policy, but a return to the original, which provided for protection for 20 years.

If we get the general principle right, we won't need a special policy for protecting proprietary digital artworks or people's right to make fair use copies of them. But we do need a prohibition on abusive license agreements. The case law striking down "shrink wrap licenses" should be legislated. A valid contract provides an equal exchange of value: It's not all prohibitions on one party while the other party has no obligations and retains all rights. It shouldn't be legal for Microsoft, for example, to license its OS for use on only one particular CPU. That is, you shouldn't have to buy a new copy of XP when you upgrade your motherboard. When you buy a movie on DVD you should be allowed to play it on any DVD player, and when you buy a copy of an OS you should be allowed to run it on all your computers. This should be a natural result of a more general prohibition on unfair contracts.

I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD).

Three Contentious Technologies (Score:5, Interesting) by rumblin'rabbit (711865)

Here are three technologies which environmental groups have generally been opposed to, but which have undergone major advancements in recent years: * Nuclear energy. * High-temperature garbage incineration. * Genetically modified foods.

All of these technologies have drawbacks, but they also have many advantages over the alternatives. Nuclear energy does not produce greenhouse gases, incineration destroys toxic chemicals and does not require land fill, and GM foods can greatly reduce the amounts of pesticide, herbicide, fertilizer, or water needed to grow food.

What is the Green Parties' stance on these, and do you see them changing their stance in the near future?

Greens have moved beyond a lesser-evil approach to politics as well as to the issues you describe above. I cannot under any circumstances accept nuclear power and genetically modified foods as a healthy alternative. There are such simpler and more sensible ways to approach these issues. We could easily eliminate the need for nuclear power by conserving more energy. We could replace nuclear power-and coal and other dirty forms of producing power-with the abundance of solar energy which shines on our country. Wind turbines, like the one I visited in Nebraska recently, are also part of the solution.

Food was grown by humankind for an awfully long time and rather successfully before the advent of pesticides and herbicides. We don't need that poison on our foods, on our soil or in our water supplies. And we don't need Frankenfood either.

As to our shortage of landfill space, we need to increase recycling and require manufacturers to take material back if it is not completely recyclable or biodegradable.

Drug Reform (Score:5, Interesting) by L3on (610722)

What is your stance on the use of medical-marijana? What do you think can be done to change the way in which the war on drugs in America is being fought, either legalizing/decriminalizing and taxing or otherwise?

Furthermore, How will you deal with our budget deficit and reform the GOP's relentless tax cuts and the Democratic Party's exorbanent spending?

Marijuana has been declared by an Administrative Judge for the FDA as one of the safest therapeutic substances known. I fully support the right of physicians and patients to use what they deem best for treatment.

The "war on drugs" is racist and an insult to all Americans. This "war" has incarcerated people of color at a much higher rate than white people. It has resulted in senseless attacks on innocent people and on our Constitution. We have to treat drug addiction as a health problem, not as a crime.

The main contributing factor to our national deficit is the world's largest military budget. The Green Party supports closing overseas military bases and reducing the military budget by 50% over ten years.

Single Payer Healthcare (Score:4, Interesting) by Coryoth (254751)

You often point out that pretty much every developed western country except the US has some form of single payer healthcare, and I think it is a valid issue, worth dicussing. However, having lived in a few countries that operate such a system I have generally found the governments involved to be having difficulties sustaining the system.

"The dilemma amounts to this: as medical science continues to advance, and as we in general live longer and longer, the amount of things that can be done continues to expand, along with the costs involved with any new technologically advanced treatments. Because of this, the costs of providing complete healthcare continue to expand at a rate faster than we can pay for. With healthcare, if something is possible, people tend to demand that it be done, even if we do not have the resources to do it.

Complete provision of healthcare simply isn't a sustainable practice as the costs are not proportionally bound by population (and hence very roughly speaking, government income), but instead by the ever expanding limits of medical science.

How do you intend to deal with this dilemma? Do you only plan to provide single payer healthcare for core and emergency services only? Do you intend to allow a parallel private health system to provide the more expensive treatments?

The basic point of single payer is that it is cheaper to administer and also that the cost of pharmaceuticals are lower as a result of bulk purchase. It is true what you say, the costs of medical care will increase in all countries as a result of innovation. However, empirical evidence shows that they will increase far less in countries that employ single payer. The best example is that of Canada and the U.S. When Canada enacted single payer their health care costs were the same percent of GDP as the U.S. Now, some 30 years later, they spend 8.9% while we spend close to15% of GDP. They spend much less in Canada on health care while treatment outcomes are similar overall in both countries.

Besides, we could pay for lifelong health care for every citizen in this country, along with college tuition for everyone who wanted to attend universities, if we stopped waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan and cut 50% from the biggest and most bloated military budget in the history of our planet. We could also do a much better job of focusing on preventative measures and take special care of infants and pregnant women, thereby ensuring a healthier start to life and reducing costs later on.

We are not opposed to allowing a private system to offer services not covered by a public system, such as Canada does. However, it is our intention to offer a comprehensive health care system which includes outpatient, inpatient, medication, dental, mental health and long term care, as research shows that this is both the most efficient and effective means for delivering health care to our population.

Viable Third-parties (Score:5, Interesting) by thewiz (24994)

Mr. Cobb, What do you believe is necessary for your party or any other to become a viable third party in American elections? Even though George Washington warned against having a partisan political system in his farewell speech, America seems to have developed a two-party system that forces third-parties out of the political process.

Also, what do you think of the Democratic and Republican parties shift away from what's good for America toward what is good for their respective parties and the businesses / people that support them while leaving the majority of Americans out?.

The need for a viable third party-or a second one, given the similarities between the two old establishment parties-is obvious and dire. We need a viable political alternative because thousands of innocent civilians and hundreds of young American kids have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a viable political alternative because we are the only industrialized nation which doesn't provide health care for its citizens. We need a viable political alternative because our country is addicted to fossil fuel and will literally kill to sustain this addiction. We need an alternative because both of the old parties support the expensive and failed "war on drugs." We need an alternative because they are more intent on building prisons than schools; because they conspired to pass the unconstitutional civil liberty-threatening "Patriot" Act and because we need to develop a solar-based economy and create family wage jobs.

We need a viable political alternative because we need to manufacture democracy here at home before we can export it.

We don't have a "two party system" so much as we have an electoral system which favors two center-right political parties. And those two parties have done everything in their power to maintain their power and eliminate, ridicule and harass the competition.

To establish viable political alternatives, we first have to create a genuine democracy. Let's remember that this country was founded by rich, white landowners for their benefit. Our founders did not create a democracy. "The people" did not-and still don't-elect the president or the judiciary. Only the House of Representatives was elected by the people when this country was founded and those people were not women or people of color or the poor.

Our democracy is evolving and we still have a long ways to go. We need to get private money out of public elections and public policy. We can't have Enron and Dick Cheney's friends writing our energy policies in secret. We need to open up the whole process including how we make decisions on who will represent us. We need to have presidential debates open to all candidates on enough ballots to win the presidency. We need to address our voter participation rates which are among the lowest of any democracy.

I'm glad to see that we are making inroads with Instant Runoff Voting which will be used this fall in San Francisco's city elections. Instant Runoff Voting is a voting method which eliminates the perceived "spoiler" problem and ensures that the winner of an election has the support of a majority of voters. Our last three presidential elections were won with less than a majority vote. Instant Runoff Voting solves this problem and allows you to vote your hopes instead of your fears.

Most democracies use proportional representation to elect their legislatures. Countries which use proportional representation have a much broader representation of political parties and also have greater representation by women and higher voter turnout.

Of course, first a party has to get on the ballot in the first place and here again, the U.S. is light years behind the rest of the world. The United States is the only country where someone has to comply with 51 different and separate requirements to run for national office.

We also have to address the corporate control of the media. It's gotten to the point where, literally, a handful of companies control everything most people see and hear on the radio, on television and in the movies. We, the people, need to reclaim our public airwaves and we need to support our local, grassroots broadcasters.

Green activists are working on all these issues and, with San Francisco as just one example, we are succeeding, even if success is often incremental and not as quick as we would like. These issues also provide an opportunity to work in coalition with other political parties, concerned citizens and "good government" organizations.

To address your other question, I'm not sure that the two old parties actually ever represented the people. As long as there have been powerful, monied interests in this country, they have had their servants in Washington, D.C.

The Green Party is beholden to no one except the people. That, above all else, is what makes us unique.

All politics is local (Score:5, Insightful) by Quixote (154172)

In the words of Tip O'Neill, "All politics is local".

What is this desire to aim directly for the Whitehouse? Why not pool resources and fight the local battles? By aiming for the presidency (and ignoring the local politics), you are setting yourselves up for a fall. We all know that in a 2-party system, rigged the way it is, your chances of winning the Whitehouse are somewhere between 0.00 and 0.000. Then why waste the resources on this race?

How many members of Congress do you have? How many locally elected officials does the Green Party have? How many judicial appointees do you have? See the pattern here?

Maybe this isn't a question as much as a rant, but if you feel like, please answer why you are wasting the time and effort on a run for the Whitehouse, when the same resources, applied at local levels, would yield immensely more benefit.

I'm glad you asked this question because many people are not aware of the fact that the Greens have elected hundreds of local officials all across this country, including Green judges. We have elected city and county councilors, school board members, soil and water conservation board members, mayors and members of state legislatures. And that's just in this country. The Green Party is an international movement and around the world we have elected members to over two dozen national legislatures and parliaments. We haven't yet elected a member of congress in this country but we will. We are getting bigger, stronger and better organized in each election cycle. We are the fastest growing political party in America.

One of the reasons why we are the fastest growing party in America is because we participate in presidential elections. Like it or not, much of the nation-indeed the world-focuses on our presidential election. One of the main reasons I'm running is to continue to build the Green Party; to register more Green voters and especially to support local candidates. Running a national and a multitude of local races are not mutually exclusive endeavors. They are actually symbiotic and each enforces and supports the other.

Obvious answer (Score:5, Funny) by RickyRay (73033)

Obviously with the current unpopularity of Bush and Kerry the final vote is down to either you or Ralph Nader. What decisive advantages do you feel you have over Nader that make you more likely to win the presidency? ;-)

Thank you for the vote of confidence, but I am a realist and realize that until there are some significant changes in this country-especially how we conduct presidential elections, including campaign finance reform, Instant Runoff Voting and free use of the public airwaves, the chances of a Green winning the presidency are somewhat remote. I do believe, however, that we will be successful in time.

In this election, the Cobb-LaMarche campaign is the only campaign which supports a genuine, progressive agenda for change and which will continue building a movement beyond Election Day. Greens are in this for the long haul. What we are trying to accomplish is greater than any one candidate or any single election. People who want to invest in a long-term movement for peace, for social and racial justice, for grassroots democracy and for a sustainable economy and environment should vote Green.

We are the party of peace, we are the party of hope and we are the party of America's future.

An anonymous reader writes "I just stumbled upon Gnomoradio, a file sharing jukebox based on Creative Commons licenses. This program looks like a garage band's dream come true! It recommends songs based on each user's ratings, and has the capability to share them. Announced less than a year ago, the program has already made a great deal of progress, as can be seen from these screenshots. I downloaded the Debian package, and aside from a few interface quirks, the program works flawlessly. Is this the future of digital music, or should we be looking for something less centralized?"

The Importance of writes "Tech columnist (for the San Jose Mercury News) Dan Gillmor is a journalist who gets it. You may not always agree with every detail of his reporting, but he clearly has a deep understanding of what is important and what is not in the technology world. And, because he is a trained writer, he knows how to explain it well. Of course, he'll probably end up most famous for what he doesn't know, as in his self-proclaimed mantra: "the readers know more than I do." In large part, his new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, is about what happens to journalism when technology reveals the truth of Gillmor's mantra." We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People author Dan Gillmor pages 299 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer The Importance Of ISBN 0596007337 summary The revolution in media and what it means for journalism.

The main focus of We the Media is the ongoing revolution in journalism, but it is much broader than that. It is about media and communication in general. It is a report in mid-2004 on many of the predictions that Marshall McLuhan made in the 1960s and 70s about how technology will change the way we communicate for good and ill.

It's actually somewhat difficult to write, precisely, what the book is about. Gillmor has taken a diverse range of subjects from technology, to politics, and law, from blogging to broadcast and spread spectrum, and combined them into a compelling and provocative narrative. The ideas come fast and furious, but Gillmor's writing talent keeps the reader on track. In fact, there are so many concepts discussed that there really is not enough room to summarize them all in this review.

Instead, it is probably easier to talk about who the book is for. Gillmor sets it out in his introduction: journalists, newsmakers and the people formerly known as "the audience."

Journalists

Very simply, We the Media should be required reading in journalism schools for students and professors. I'm serious. If you're a publisher, editor, or an actual breathing reporter, and you want to get up to speed on what is happening to your profession, you need to read this book.

Revolutionary shifts don't usually happen overnight, and the one in journalism that Gillmor describes didn't either. He briefly sketches a progression of changes from revolutionary era newspapers and pamphleteers to the increasing centralization of corporate media behemoths in the 20th century. However, there is a day he can point to when the latest shift became pretty obvious. That day was Sept 11, 2001. That was the day that personal media, through email lists and websites, became an important way for the story to get out.

Personally, I was at a public television conference in Wisconsin. Many of the attendees were journalists for local PBS affiliates. Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down, and the broadcast news was simply playing video of the attacks over and over. Soon, many of the other attendees were also checking Slashdot for links to and mirrors of the news gathered by Slashdot's readers. That may not seem like a big deal, but as Gillmor relates, similar things were taking place in many other net forums. The importance of these alternate news sites has continued (you're reading this aren't you?).

Because the whole book is about journalism, it is a bit hard to pick out more highlights, but Gillmor does begin his chapter on "Professional Journalists Joining the Conversation" with a Slashdot anecdote concerning Jane's Intelligence Review thanking the Slashdot community for pointing out the flaws in a proposed article on cyberterrorism back in 1999. Actually, much of what Gillmor is talking about is basically how journalists can be more like Jane's - working with and taking advantage of the fact that the audience knows more than the publication.

Newsmakers

If you are a politician, CEO or advisor to similar, you should probably read this book as well. In many ways, journalists are middlemen, connecting those making news with those who want to learn the news. One of the things technology is enabling is the ability of newsmakers to connect directly with their audience in many ways. Of course, as Gillmor documents, many businessmen and politicians don't really understand how to communicate through this new medium properly. Nevertheless, there are lessons that can be learned from the mistakes as well as some positive examples of those who've used new technologies successfully.

The People Formerly Known as "The Audience"

Basically, everybody who comments down below this review is participating in it. You're not simply an audience; you're co-authors of this review. What I'm writing here is only a starting point for the conversation. If you're interested in becoming a more active participant, in learning more about the role the once-passive, now-proactive audience is playing in creating, editing and filtering media, then you probably want to read this book too. We're all journalists now.

Free As in Speech (and Beer)

The book has an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons license. The digital text isn't available on the web yet, but should be very soon. Expect a profusion of formats, audio versions, translations, and wikis to follow. One thought of mine is that classes of journalism students should be regularly given an assignment to keep the book up-to-date.

We the Media also has a weblog, which will be a good place to keep track of the book as it develops. Just because a book has been published doesn't mean it has finished changing.

You can purchase We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

The Importance of writes "Tech columnist (for the San Jose Mercury News) Dan Gillmor is a journalist who gets it. You may not always agree with every detail of his reporting, but he clearly has a deep understanding of what is important and what is not in the technology world. And, because he is a trained writer, he knows how to explain it well. Of course, he'll probably end up most famous for what he doesn't know, as in his self-proclaimed mantra: "the readers know more than I do." In large part, his new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, is about what happens to journalism when technology reveals the truth of Gillmor's mantra." We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People author Dan Gillmor pages 299 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer The Importance Of ISBN 0596007337 summary The revolution in media and what it means for journalism.

The main focus of We the Media is the ongoing revolution in journalism, but it is much broader than that. It is about media and communication in general. It is a report in mid-2004 on many of the predictions that Marshall McLuhan made in the 1960s and 70s about how technology will change the way we communicate for good and ill.

It's actually somewhat difficult to write, precisely, what the book is about. Gillmor has taken a diverse range of subjects from technology, to politics, and law, from blogging to broadcast and spread spectrum, and combined them into a compelling and provocative narrative. The ideas come fast and furious, but Gillmor's writing talent keeps the reader on track. In fact, there are so many concepts discussed that there really is not enough room to summarize them all in this review.

Instead, it is probably easier to talk about who the book is for. Gillmor sets it out in his introduction: journalists, newsmakers and the people formerly known as "the audience."

Journalists

Very simply, We the Media should be required reading in journalism schools for students and professors. I'm serious. If you're a publisher, editor, or an actual breathing reporter, and you want to get up to speed on what is happening to your profession, you need to read this book.

Revolutionary shifts don't usually happen overnight, and the one in journalism that Gillmor describes didn't either. He briefly sketches a progression of changes from revolutionary era newspapers and pamphleteers to the increasing centralization of corporate media behemoths in the 20th century. However, there is a day he can point to when the latest shift became pretty obvious. That day was Sept 11, 2001. That was the day that personal media, through email lists and websites, became an important way for the story to get out.

Personally, I was at a public television conference in Wisconsin. Many of the attendees were journalists for local PBS affiliates. Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down, and the broadcast news was simply playing video of the attacks over and over. Soon, many of the other attendees were also checking Slashdot for links to and mirrors of the news gathered by Slashdot's readers. That may not seem like a big deal, but as Gillmor relates, similar things were taking place in many other net forums. The importance of these alternate news sites has continued (you're reading this aren't you?).

Because the whole book is about journalism, it is a bit hard to pick out more highlights, but Gillmor does begin his chapter on "Professional Journalists Joining the Conversation" with a Slashdot anecdote concerning Jane's Intelligence Review thanking the Slashdot community for pointing out the flaws in a proposed article on cyberterrorism back in 1999. Actually, much of what Gillmor is talking about is basically how journalists can be more like Jane's - working with and taking advantage of the fact that the audience knows more than the publication.

Newsmakers

If you are a politician, CEO or advisor to similar, you should probably read this book as well. In many ways, journalists are middlemen, connecting those making news with those who want to learn the news. One of the things technology is enabling is the ability of newsmakers to connect directly with their audience in many ways. Of course, as Gillmor documents, many businessmen and politicians don't really understand how to communicate through this new medium properly. Nevertheless, there are lessons that can be learned from the mistakes as well as some positive examples of those who've used new technologies successfully.

The People Formerly Known as "The Audience"

Basically, everybody who comments down below this review is participating in it. You're not simply an audience; you're co-authors of this review. What I'm writing here is only a starting point for the conversation. If you're interested in becoming a more active participant, in learning more about the role the once-passive, now-proactive audience is playing in creating, editing and filtering media, then you probably want to read this book too. We're all journalists now.

Free As in Speech (and Beer)

The book has an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons license. The digital text isn't available on the web yet, but should be very soon. Expect a profusion of formats, audio versions, translations, and wikis to follow. One thought of mine is that classes of journalism students should be regularly given an assignment to keep the book up-to-date.

We the Media also has a weblog, which will be a good place to keep track of the book as it develops. Just because a book has been published doesn't mean it has finished changing.

You can purchase We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

claes writes "There is an article "Metadata for the desktop" that suggests that RDF should be used to describe data in desktop environments. This is an interesting idea. RDF is already used by Creative Commons to attach license metadata to its works. Mozilla also supports it. RDF was designed for the web, but can it also find its way to the desktop? And what metadata is most important to describe?"

scsiiscs writes "I have just had the pleasure of reading Lysergically Yours, the first offering from author Frank Duff. As the chemically aware among you may have guessed from the title, this is a novel which deals in part with the synthesis of and culture surrounding LSD. It is much more than just a drug book though, and what's better, it has been released under a Creative Commons license. " Read on for the rest of his review. Lysergically Yours author Frank Duff pages 120 publisher Insurgent Productions/No Media Kings rating Excellent (10) reviewer Ben Konrath ISBN 097348070X summary Clandestine chemists accidentally open the doorway into new modes of human consciousness.

April 16th, 1945: Dr. Albert Hoffman's work on obstetrics pharmacology at Sandoz Laboratories is unexpectedly interrupted by a "stream of fantastic pictures and extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors."[1]

The following weeks saw Dr. Hoffman and his colleagues perform a series of self-experimentations which led to the discovery of the psychotropic effects of D-lysergic acid diethylamide 25, the most potent hallucinogen yet discovered -- and better known as LSD. The doors were suddenly flung open for a new age of exploration into the human mind. Government sanctions however quickly put an end to this line of research. Lysergically Yours, the first novel from Toronto-based author Duff supposes that this research program is still going strong, but not in the places one may traditionally think to look for it.

The reader is first introduced to Johnny, a computer science student at the University of Toronto and one-time high school acid dealer. It is through the lens of Johnny that the reader meets the book's delightfully diverse cast of supporting characters. From Lyle the punk-rock chemist to Tinka the manic witch and surprisingly affable career criminal Ivan, Duff continuously delivers with characters that you almost expect to run into the next time you're on campus despite the fact that they are so eccentric as to verge on unbelievable. As a former University of Toronto student myself, I must admit that the setting of the book was also wonderfully realized. From Convocation Hall to Lash Miller Chemical Laboratories to the basement of Hart House, Lysergically Yours romps across the university and the city bringing to life each locale that it touches.

The story itself is somewhat hard to classify. The opening throws Johnny and the reader into a very tense scene in which Johnny is the prisoner of Korean and Vietnamese mobsters and the building in which he is being held is being assaulted from outside by unknown forces. From this action-movie introduction, the story flashes back and begins to relate a decidedly non-action-movie drug culture caper story wherein Lyle and Johnny attempt to fund illegal research and a hedonistic lifestyle through the synthesis and sale of LSD. By the end however, as Johnny and Lyle find themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, the plot of Lysergically Yours verges strongly on the science fictional, yet Duff manages to wrap it all up into a bundle which leaves the reader feeling both entertained and satisfied.

At times the discussion of the technical details of drug synthesis and of various less than legal money-making schemes seem unnecessarily verbose, but perhaps they will be appreciated by those who are more familiar with the fields or even looking for a few pointers. In general however, Duff's prose is poetic in its spareness and simplicity. His dialogue also is unflowery and believable, conveying a real sense of character and situation. Even the far-sweeping conclusion of the novel, suggesting a world forever and fundamentally changed by the actions of a couple of punk rockers, is presented in a crisp and unapologetic style. As a reader, I could not help but be reminded of Neal Stephenson and, to a certain extent, Philip K. Dick.

My largest complaint with Lysergically Yours is that it is too short. Weighing in at 120 pages, the book is an easy read but leaves you feeling that it could have easily been expanded to fill twice as many. Still, in a time when most books seem to be guilty of the opposite sin, I am willing to forgive Frank Duff this indiscretion.

Another thing which makes this novel worth noticing is that it is released in affiliation with No Media Kings, an organization started by Toronto-based author Jim Munroe to promote a return to grass-roots media. In accordance with this "media of the people, by the people and for the people" ethos, Frank Duff has released the novel as a free e-text under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/Share-Alike license. This license not only allows the text of the novel to be freely distributed in any medium, but also explicitly allows for anyone to create derivative works from the novel for any non-commercial purpose. The use of this contract follows in the footsteps of successful science fiction author Cory Doctorow. The book is available as a physical artifact at a variety of small bookstores or directly from the author via his website where the e-book and several of his other shorter works are also available for free download.

[1] Hoffman, A. (1980) "LSD: My Problem Child," New York: McGraw-Hill.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

rocketjam writes "OpenTextBook.org is a new project to create a free, open text book 'collaboratively written by anyone on the internet', using a Creative Commons license. Citing the free software development model and the philosophy that underlies much of that effort, OpenTextBook.org's introduction says this philosophy should apply 'at its most basic to the learning of science.' They hope the project will help to counter the current governmental trend of strengthening the scope, duration and rights of intellectual property owners while cutting back on the fair use rights of individuals. The current state of the project is available as a daily snapshot pdf file which contains the introduction to the project and 9 chapters mostly covering math at this time."

Chilltowner asks: "I'm trying to get local (US) maps together for a community project. I want to able to modify and annotate the maps and provide them free to the public, creating a derivative open work. They also need to be accurate down to the street level and no more than 10 years out of date. I've been searching around for maps available in the public domain or under open licenses, like the Creative Commons licenses allowing derivative works. I've looked at the National Atlas, but the maps, though interesting, aren't detailed enough with street information. The topographical and aerial image maps available through that site are from Terraserver, which are copyrighted to Microsoft. Plus, I really just need simple vector road maps, not USGS rasters. I tried looking at the Census Bureau's TIGER line data, but I can't make heads or tails of it. Are there maps available through other agencies (national or international)? Are there Free/Open-Source Software projects that are making use of public data to build street-level maps for free (as in speech) use?"

powcom writes "The BBC appears to be delivering on its promise of releasing its material to the public - they're modelling their licensing on Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig is very excited and so I imagine, will a lot of other people be - rightly." This brief article also mentions yesterday's release of Creative Commons' 2.0 licenses -- well worth reading about.

JoshuaDFranklin writes "When confronted with the reality of Open Source, academics often ask what processes allow it to happen. In his new book The Success of Open Source, Berkeley professor Steven Weber answers that question. He presents a clear, logical picture of how Open Source development works in a variety of projects, and comes to the intriguing conclusion that the process may be generalizable to other areas of production. The results, he argues, would 'make the consequences of the first-generation Internet seem quaint.'" Read on for the rest of Franklin's review. The Success of Open Source author Steven Weber pages 320 pages, 5 line illustrations publisher Harvard University Press rating 9 reviewer Joshua Daniel Franklin ISBN 0674012925 summary Weber argues that the success of Open Source is due to a production process than may be generalizable to other arenas.

Weber is an academic and makes no apologies for it. He is not presenting an exciting new business plan, advocating a particular method of software development, or calling hackers to revolution. He is simply describing his findings after extensive research of the Open Source development process and drawing conclusions from them. As such, this book may not appeal to everyone in the Open Source community. However, Weber's ideas are timely and informative for anyone who wants to explain or advocate Open Source. He likens his work to The Machine that Changed the World, the story of Toyota's production method (224):

That book made two simple and profound points: The Toyota "system" was not a car, and it was not uniquely Japanese. The parallels are obvious. Open source is not a piece of software, and it is not unique to a group of hackers.

The first part of The Success of Open Source is a historical case study that examines the origins and social development of the Open Source community. It begins with Unix and hacker culture. For those who have read Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Peter Salus' A Quarter Century of UNIX, there is little new material here, but Weber offers a new and interesting perspective on the events. For example, he offers the insight that "hacker culture" existed before widespread network connectivity, drawing into question whether cheap bandwidth is really essential.

From there, he covers the development of the BSDs, Apache, and Linux, focusing again on social structures. He describes diverse events such as the messy expulsion of Theo de Raadt from the NetBSD core, the creation of Apache by an informal group of interested developers, and the establishment of Alan Cox as de facto Linux networking lieutenant. Weber draws from an impressive array of firsthand accounts, including mailing lists, websites, conference speeches, and personal interviews.

I get some interesting trivia out of this, such as Larry McVoy's original Unix is dying troll (98). Unfortunately, since Weber's narrative is mainly topical, it is occasionally redundant in telling one story from multiple social angles. Other claims are close to flamebait, such as suggesting that Richard Stallman is an example of a "failed leader." (168)

For the second half of the book, Weber moves on to Explaining Open Source in the terms of his discipline, political economy. He sees two broad categories of principles to the Open Source process: Microfoundations, including individual motivations and the economic logic of the collective good; and Macro-Organization, solving the problems of coordination and complexity. (133) While I doubt each reader will catch every academic nuance in these chapters, Weber is thankfully sparing in his use of specialized vocabulary and writes his overall argument in clear, easy-to-follow logic.

This section also contains the most insightful observations in The Success of Open Source. While there are too many to list here, one is the concept of Open Source Software as antirival. As more copies are made and put into use, value increases as a result of a larger market and the small percentage of users that contribute bug reports and possibly patches. This turns the traditional "free rider" problem into an advantage.

Though Weber does not mention this in the text, one can see part of this principle in proprietary vendors' providing free downloads or turning their backs on rampant piracy. It also does not take a great leap of logic to see application of the antirival model to other fields such as music or academic research.

As is customary in social science literature, Weber uses his conclusion to both recap his argument and to raise questions for future direction of research. What is the best organization method for property distribution, as opposed to the current methods based on exclusion? How can the Open Source production process be used effectively to improve prospects for the developing world? What is the best way for closed, hierarchical systems to interact with open, network-based ones? While some of the issues involved are offtopic for this book, hopefully future work will examine these questions in depth.

Though Open Source has been mentioned in many recent works, The Success of Open Source is the first academic book that focuses on the Open Source community as its object of study. It gives a readable, thought-provoking, and occasionally funny account of what Open Source is and means, making it an extremely valuable resource for those who want to engage and discuss these issues on an intellectual level. As Weber states, his positive, constructive outlook "may not be fully satisfying, but it's not a bad place to start." (272)

Joshua Daniel Franklin is a graduate student at the University of Washington's Information School. This review may be redistributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. You can read the table of contents, preface, and an excerpt of the first chapter of The Success of Open Source at the Harvard University Press website. The reviewer's website has an list of errata. You can purchase the The Success of Open Source from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

JT Olds writes "Apparently George Mason University is running a project to document differences in speech and accents from different backgrounds and the like. They have a paragraph that 306 sample readers have read and recorded, and all of these sound files are categorized by background, gender, age, and other things. They say that this is primarily for teaching and learning, and is especially useful for any linguists out there, but I just thought it was cool. The sound bytes are released under the Creative Commons license. Of course, the Google cache of the main frame is here. As a side note, I did get the link to this from Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins."

Peter Wayner writes: "When jury duty called, I was lucky enough to have a copy of Larry Lessig's new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, to take along. The Mitchell Courthouse in Baltimore is one of the most beautiful and ambitious marble allegories for how the law can be elegant, ornate, and permanently imposing. It was the perfect place to read a new book devoted to stopping the old guard media czars from using law to keep the couch potatoes down." Read on for the rest of Wayner's review of the book -- which is released today in hardcover, but also available for free online. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity author Lawrence Lessig pages 388 publisher Penguin rating 9 reviewer Peter Wayner ISBN 0375505784 summary Lessig takes a serious but accessible look at how law has been subverted by Big Media and proposes workable steps for taking it back.

Lessig is now famous for a number of reasons, including his two previous books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. In the first, he was one of the first to affirm what many Slashdot readers know almost instinctively: whomever writes the code determines how the world works. Making the right decisions about power and control when designing a computer system is just as important as writing laws for the future. In the second, he writes of the importance of a vast cultural commons which acts as the wellspring for our expression and the grounding plate for our souls.

His new book is his most casual and most accessible. His prose is improving as he drops the footnote-heavy habit of legal writing and adopts a bloggier style driven by anecdotes and personal revelation. And what anecdotes he has -- Lessig's years on the barricades have given a surprisingly large collection of tales that will make any artist or citizen cringe. Time and time again, the powerful warlords of the entertainment conglomerates have banded together to try to stomp out the sharing and cooperation emerging from the Internet. After years of amassing a strangehold on the world's culture, the conglomerates aren't letting this cheap, fast and out-of-control technology sweep it all away.

My favorite anecdote, if one could be said to stand out, comes from a film maker documenting an opera company. When the camera caught a snippet of the stagehands watching the Simpsons with the sound turned down, the director wanted to add a four-second clip to the movie. Matt Groening said "Yes." The lawyers said it was clearly fair use. But Fox's executives responded with the kind of obscenity that doesn't upset the FCC: pay us $10,000. The clip didn't make the film because the director couldn't afford to go head-to-head with the Fox legal department.

This is just one of a number of stories of how interesting, invigorating content and innovation was strangled at birth by old guard. The anecdotes are, I think, an effort to atone for his loss in the Eldred case and reargue it. He presented the Supreme Court with a very logical and legal reading of why it was wrong for Congress to continue extending the length of a copyright monopoly and the court didn't buy it. A friend of his said that this tack was wrong because the court wanted to feel the depths of the injustice. The justices didn't want laws and footnotes, they wanted something human. Lessig blames his loss on not taking this advice. (As an aside, Lessig's personal description of taking a case to the Supreme Court is a good way to understand just how human the game can be.)

This time around, he piles the examples on top of more examples to show just how the conglomerates can hurt the artist and culture in general. After this case failed, Lessig tried another compromise that exposed the true goals of the copyright czars. Lessig describes his efforts to recreate a copyright registration system. If someone wanted to keep a copyright in force after 50 years, Lessig suggested getting them to pay a $1 fee. This would help everyone keep the copyright straight and make it simpler for everyone to understand just who has what rights to an art work. Any art work that goes unregistered flops into the public domain. Anyone who's tried to clear rights to a project will see this as a step in the right direction. The copyright industry, however, rejected this structure in a way that Lessig suggests illustrates how much this is about power and control, not creativity and expression.

Lessig has other tricks up his sleeve. If he can't convince the U.S. government to change the law, he can appeal to the artists themselves who have the ultimate control. He started his Creative Commons project several years ago and now artists can use several boilerplate licenses that reserve some of the rights while releasing others.

This new book itself is also available for free (PDF) under the license, a tactic that has worked well for Cory Doctorow and myself in the past. When I released Free for All under the license several years after the book was published, I watched the asking price on Amazon's used book market rise more than 40%. It wasn't a big jump, but it was still a bit counterintuitive. The freely available text encouraged people to buy the more readable printed version. I think Lessig will see the same effect. The sales driven by the people who read the electronic version will be greater than the sales lost to the people who just read the downloaded copy.

The good news is that the markets and the consumers are already heeding Lessig's advice because they instinctively disdain a monopoly. The power of the old networks is rapidly disappearing and the increasing concentration among the old guard is as much an illustration of the last ditch effort by the executives to cash out by taking large bonuses from the transactions. Some worry about the concentration of power in the radio world by companies like Clear Channel. But who listens to radio for music any longer? One Clear Channel station near my house plays traffic reports every 10 minutes during the day because their audience is dominated by people trapped on aptly named "parkways". The station may play as few as three songs an hour between 6:30am and 9am. The rest of the time, they yak about movies or the weather and their influence upon music continues to drop.

There are surprisingly good alternatives developing to take over the space. Lessig does an excellent job describing how the Internet radio stations were mugged with unfair regulations, but it's important to remember that they continue to exist because they offer something better than endless traffic reports. Furthermore, competition is coming from strange places. Starbucks is just one such company selling commercial- free mix tapes that are, for almost all intents and purposes, just a plastic disk version of a cool DJ. More and more radio-like venues are appearing.

There are other reasons why the concentration is backfiring. Lessig does a good job explaining how the television networks are squeezing out competition from independent producers. He describes how Norman Lear was only able to bring us "All in the Family" because he was free to take his work from ABC to CBS. That freedom disappeared after Congress repealed the laws forbidding the networks from owning stakes in the shows they broadcast. Now, if you want to get on CBS, it helps to sell a part of your show to CBS or, even better, just sell the whole thing.

But is this strategy really working for the networks? Their ratings continue to plummet. There's a reason why there are so many drug commercials for arthritis remedies on network air. That generation is the last one who watches network television almost instinctively. Lessig likes to complain about the "soviet" nature of these networks. It's a wonderful word that reads on many levels. The more they squeeze out competition and aggregate power in the committees, the more they lose the fluid competition that lets cream rise to the top.

So, who really cares if CBS isn't available on the Dish network? There are hundreds of other channels offering good fare. It was a different story in the 1970's when there were only three networks and CBS offered shows like "All in the Family" and "Mary Tyler Moore". Then, they controlled the heart of our popular culture. Today, the network ratings are so low on Saturday night that all of the networks are looking for a way to stop broadcasting on that day. Aside from the NCAA basketball tournament, I've lived without CBS for years without missing a thing. (Even then, I get most sports news from the websites.) The DVD player is a very, very powerful and destructive technology. When you can buy 50 movies for $30, who even needs CBS, the Dish network or HBO?

All of these idea swirled through my mind as I read Lessig's book and waited during jury duty. Are things getting worse or better? Are the 40+ million plus fileswapping pirates winning, or are the draconian laws crushing our creativity like a jackboot? I spent my time thinking of this balance while waiting for the judge and the attorneys to sift through 150 people to find the right 12 folks to render a fair and impartial verdict. On one hand, it was remarkable that society was being so careful before imprisoning someone for attempted murder. On the other, it was clear that the effort can't be sustained for the 40 million+ file sharing pirates who are thumbing their nose at the law.

Lessig understands this. One of his most persuasive arguments is that the current law becomes more marginalized as it becomes increasingly less fair. Prohibition of alcohol corroded the law and now the increasing prohibition of fair use is eroding respect for copyright.You only need to travel a few blocks from the Mitchell court house to end up in dangerous regions of Baltimore where the marble and the pomp can't do much to protect you. Lessig, the lawyer, knows the law can only work when it is fair and equitable. This new book is a strong and passionate argument for how we can restore some sanity to the system and restore our faith in copyright law. Some people think that Lessig is trying to "smash" the copyright system, but I think he's just trying to restore its ability to function.

Peter Wayner is the author of Free for All , a book on the open source movement and Policing Online Games, a book on how to build the Mitchell courthouse in cyberspace. You can purchase Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. mpawlo points out you can get the book free and gratis via Bittorrent.

Peter Wayner writes: "When jury duty called, I was lucky enough to have a copy of Larry Lessig's new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, to take along. The Mitchell Courthouse in Baltimore is one of the most beautiful and ambitious marble allegories for how the law can be elegant, ornate, and permanently imposing. It was the perfect place to read a new book devoted to stopping the old guard media czars from using law to keep the couch potatoes down." Read on for the rest of Wayner's review of the book -- which is released today in hardcover, but also available for free online. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity author Lawrence Lessig pages 388 publisher Penguin rating 9 reviewer Peter Wayner ISBN 0375505784 summary Lessig takes a serious but accessible look at how law has been subverted by Big Media and proposes workable steps for taking it back.

Lessig is now famous for a number of reasons, including his two previous books, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace and The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. In the first, he was one of the first to affirm what many Slashdot readers know almost instinctively: whomever writes the code determines how the world works. Making the right decisions about power and control when designing a computer system is just as important as writing laws for the future. In the second, he writes of the importance of a vast cultural commons which acts as the wellspring for our expression and the grounding plate for our souls.

His new book is his most casual and most accessible. His prose is improving as he drops the footnote-heavy habit of legal writing and adopts a bloggier style driven by anecdotes and personal revelation. And what anecdotes he has -- Lessig's years on the barricades have given a surprisingly large collection of tales that will make any artist or citizen cringe. Time and time again, the powerful warlords of the entertainment conglomerates have banded together to try to stomp out the sharing and cooperation emerging from the Internet. After years of amassing a strangehold on the world's culture, the conglomerates aren't letting this cheap, fast and out-of-control technology sweep it all away.

My favorite anecdote, if one could be said to stand out, comes from a film maker documenting an opera company. When the camera caught a snippet of the stagehands watching the Simpsons with the sound turned down, the director wanted to add a four-second clip to the movie. Matt Groening said "Yes." The lawyers said it was clearly fair use. But Fox's executives responded with the kind of obscenity that doesn't upset the FCC: pay us $10,000. The clip didn't make the film because the director couldn't afford to go head-to-head with the Fox legal department.

This is just one of a number of stories of how interesting, invigorating content and innovation was strangled at birth by old guard. The anecdotes are, I think, an effort to atone for his loss in the Eldred case and reargue it. He presented the Supreme Court with a very logical and legal reading of why it was wrong for Congress to continue extending the length of a copyright monopoly and the court didn't buy it. A friend of his said that this tack was wrong because the court wanted to feel the depths of the injustice. The justices didn't want laws and footnotes, they wanted something human. Lessig blames his loss on not taking this advice. (As an aside, Lessig's personal description of taking a case to the Supreme Court is a good way to understand just how human the game can be.)

This time around, he piles the examples on top of more examples to show just how the conglomerates can hurt the artist and culture in general. After this case failed, Lessig tried another compromise that exposed the true goals of the copyright czars. Lessig describes his efforts to recreate a copyright registration system. If someone wanted to keep a copyright in force after 50 years, Lessig suggested getting them to pay a $1 fee. This would help everyone keep the copyright straight and make it simpler for everyone to understand just who has what rights to an art work. Any art work that goes unregistered flops into the public domain. Anyone who's tried to clear rights to a project will see this as a step in the right direction. The copyright industry, however, rejected this structure in a way that Lessig suggests illustrates how much this is about power and control, not creativity and expression.

Lessig has other tricks up his sleeve. If he can't convince the U.S. government to change the law, he can appeal to the artists themselves who have the ultimate control. He started his Creative Commons project several years ago and now artists can use several boilerplate licenses that reserve some of the rights while releasing others.

This new book itself is also available for free (PDF) under the license, a tactic that has worked well for Cory Doctorow and myself in the past. When I released Free for All under the license several years after the book was published, I watched the asking price on Amazon's used book market rise more than 40%. It wasn't a big jump, but it was still a bit counterintuitive. The freely available text encouraged people to buy the more readable printed version. I think Lessig will see the same effect. The sales driven by the people who read the electronic version will be greater than the sales lost to the people who just read the downloaded copy.

The good news is that the markets and the consumers are already heeding Lessig's advice because they instinctively disdain a monopoly. The power of the old networks is rapidly disappearing and the increasing concentration among the old guard is as much an illustration of the last ditch effort by the executives to cash out by taking large bonuses from the transactions. Some worry about the concentration of power in the radio world by companies like Clear Channel. But who listens to radio for music any longer? One Clear Channel station near my house plays traffic reports every 10 minutes during the day because their audience is dominated by people trapped on aptly named "parkways". The station may play as few as three songs an hour between 6:30am and 9am. The rest of the time, they yak about movies or the weather and their influence upon music continues to drop.

There are surprisingly good alternatives developing to take over the space. Lessig does an excellent job describing how the Internet radio stations were mugged with unfair regulations, but it's important to remember that they continue to exist because they offer something better than endless traffic reports. Furthermore, competition is coming from strange places. Starbucks is just one such company selling commercial- free mix tapes that are, for almost all intents and purposes, just a plastic disk version of a cool DJ. More and more radio-like venues are appearing.

There are other reasons why the concentration is backfiring. Lessig does a good job explaining how the television networks are squeezing out competition from independent producers. He describes how Norman Lear was only able to bring us "All in the Family" because he was free to take his work from ABC to CBS. That freedom disappeared after Congress repealed the laws forbidding the networks from owning stakes in the shows they broadcast. Now, if you want to get on CBS, it helps to sell a part of your show to CBS or, even better, just sell the whole thing.

But is this strategy really working for the networks? Their ratings continue to plummet. There's a reason why there are so many drug commercials for arthritis remedies on network air. That generation is the last one who watches network television almost instinctively. Lessig likes to complain about the "soviet" nature of these networks. It's a wonderful word that reads on many levels. The more they squeeze out competition and aggregate power in the committees, the more they lose the fluid competition that lets cream rise to the top.

So, who really cares if CBS isn't available on the Dish network? There are hundreds of other channels offering good fare. It was a different story in the 1970's when there were only three networks and CBS offered shows like "All in the Family" and "Mary Tyler Moore". Then, they controlled the heart of our popular culture. Today, the network ratings are so low on Saturday night that all of the networks are looking for a way to stop broadcasting on that day. Aside from the NCAA basketball tournament, I've lived without CBS for years without missing a thing. (Even then, I get most sports news from the websites.) The DVD player is a very, very powerful and destructive technology. When you can buy 50 movies for $30, who even needs CBS, the Dish network or HBO?

All of these idea swirled through my mind as I read Lessig's book and waited during jury duty. Are things getting worse or better? Are the 40+ million plus fileswapping pirates winning, or are the draconian laws crushing our creativity like a jackboot? I spent my time thinking of this balance while waiting for the judge and the attorneys to sift through 150 people to find the right 12 folks to render a fair and impartial verdict. On one hand, it was remarkable that society was being so careful before imprisoning someone for attempted murder. On the other, it was clear that the effort can't be sustained for the 40 million+ file sharing pirates who are thumbing their nose at the law.

Lessig understands this. One of his most persuasive arguments is that the current law becomes more marginalized as it becomes increasingly less fair. Prohibition of alcohol corroded the law and now the increasing prohibition of fair use is eroding respect for copyright.You only need to travel a few blocks from the Mitchell court house to end up in dangerous regions of Baltimore where the marble and the pomp can't do much to protect you. Lessig, the lawyer, knows the law can only work when it is fair and equitable. This new book is a strong and passionate argument for how we can restore some sanity to the system and restore our faith in copyright law. Some people think that Lessig is trying to "smash" the copyright system, but I think he's just trying to restore its ability to function.

Peter Wayner is the author of Free for All , a book on the open source movement and Policing Online Games, a book on how to build the Mitchell courthouse in cyberspace. You can purchase Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page. mpawlo points out you can get the book free and gratis via Bittorrent.

The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Creative Commons announced the launch of 'the Science Commons exploratory phase.' This may eventually become a sister organization of Creative Commons that 'will delve into both legal areas (patents, data) and subject matter (biomedicine) outside the scope of [the] current organization.' In related news, the open access science publisher, BioMed Central, has adopted CC's 'attribution license' for their over 100 peer-reviewed journals."

The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Creative Commons announced the launch of 'the Science Commons exploratory phase.' This may eventually become a sister organization of Creative Commons that 'will delve into both legal areas (patents, data) and subject matter (biomedicine) outside the scope of [the] current organization.' In related news, the open access science publisher, BioMed Central, has adopted CC's 'attribution license' for their over 100 peer-reviewed journals."

The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Creative Commons announced the launch of 'the Science Commons exploratory phase.' This may eventually become a sister organization of Creative Commons that 'will delve into both legal areas (patents, data) and subject matter (biomedicine) outside the scope of [the] current organization.' In related news, the open access science publisher, BioMed Central, has adopted CC's 'attribution license' for their over 100 peer-reviewed journals."

The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Creative Commons announced the launch of 'the Science Commons exploratory phase.' This may eventually become a sister organization of Creative Commons that 'will delve into both legal areas (patents, data) and subject matter (biomedicine) outside the scope of [the] current organization.' In related news, the open access science publisher, BioMed Central, has adopted CC's 'attribution license' for their over 100 peer-reviewed journals."

linuxfan writes "It looks like LinuxQuestions.org is aiming to build the largest independent Linux-related knowledgebase using a Wiki. They are using the same software as Wikipedia (MediaWiki), are using a Creative Commons license and look to be off to a good start."

ArcRiley writes "The winners have been announced for the contest that Creative Commons launched last fall to deliver their ``some rights reserved'' message with a short video. Congratulations to Justin Cone, Sheryl Seibert, and Kuba & Alek Tarkowski for their winning videos!"

ArcRiley writes "The winners have been announced for the contest that Creative Commons launched last fall to deliver their ``some rights reserved'' message with a short video. Congratulations to Justin Cone, Sheryl Seibert, and Kuba & Alek Tarkowski for their winning videos!"

ArcRiley writes "The winners have been announced for the contest that Creative Commons launched last fall to deliver their ``some rights reserved'' message with a short video. Congratulations to Justin Cone, Sheryl Seibert, and Kuba & Alek Tarkowski for their winning videos!"

TrentC writes "I was looking at the Creative Commons site this weekend, and was surprised to find, on their license generation page, entries (translated into Portuguese) in a sidebar for the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, including RDF blocks. Since CC is pushing for projects that can generate, validate, display and search for CC license metadata, how cool would it be to be able to do a Google search for GPL-licensed material, or a P2P network for MP3s released under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license? As an example, Nathan Yergler has released mozCC, a plugin for Mozilla and Firebird that allows you to view CC license information embedded in a webpage, and provides icons on the status bar displaying the CC license options."

TrentC writes "I was looking at the Creative Commons site this weekend, and was surprised to find, on their license generation page, entries (translated into Portuguese) in a sidebar for the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, including RDF blocks. Since CC is pushing for projects that can generate, validate, display and search for CC license metadata, how cool would it be to be able to do a Google search for GPL-licensed material, or a P2P network for MP3s released under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license? As an example, Nathan Yergler has released mozCC, a plugin for Mozilla and Firebird that allows you to view CC license information embedded in a webpage, and provides icons on the status bar displaying the CC license options."

TrentC writes "I was looking at the Creative Commons site this weekend, and was surprised to find, on their license generation page, entries (translated into Portuguese) in a sidebar for the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, including RDF blocks. Since CC is pushing for projects that can generate, validate, display and search for CC license metadata, how cool would it be to be able to do a Google search for GPL-licensed material, or a P2P network for MP3s released under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license? As an example, Nathan Yergler has released mozCC, a plugin for Mozilla and Firebird that allows you to view CC license information embedded in a webpage, and provides icons on the status bar displaying the CC license options."

TrentC writes "I was looking at the Creative Commons site this weekend, and was surprised to find, on their license generation page, entries (translated into Portuguese) in a sidebar for the GNU General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License, including RDF blocks. Since CC is pushing for projects that can generate, validate, display and search for CC license metadata, how cool would it be to be able to do a Google search for GPL-licensed material, or a P2P network for MP3s released under the CC Attribution-ShareAlike license? As an example, Nathan Yergler has released mozCC, a plugin for Mozilla and Firebird that allows you to view CC license information embedded in a webpage, and provides icons on the status bar displaying the CC license options."

An anonymous reader writes "Over on GrokLaw, PJ and others have decided to create a 'timeline' for Unix and Linux development. The plan is to recreate, as completely as possible, the history of these two operating systems '...from the perspective of tracing the code by copyright, patents, trade secret, and trademark. The idea is that the final timeline will be a publicly-available resource, released under a Creative Commons license, that will assist the community in defending against - or better yet in deterring - future lawsuits against GNU/Linux code.'"

OrenWolf writes "Cory Doctorow (of EFF and Boing Boing fame), has released his second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe today.. it should be showing up in bookstores shortly. As with his earlier work, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory has made the whole text of the novel available as a free download "in a variety of open, standards-defined formats, under the terms of a Creative Commons license." Cory also has a writeup "explaining why I've done it: in a nutshell, this worked really well for my first book, and I'd be crazy not to repeat the experiment with my second novel.""

cjkarr writes "The Oyez Project has put the Eldred v. Ashcroft audio online today. A streaming SMIL presentation is online in addition to MP3 files and an MPEG4 video of Prof. Lessig's recent talk at the Clio Society. MP3s are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, while the video is released under the Creative Commons NonCommercial license. Please download, mirror, or remix these files to your heart's content."

cjkarr writes "The Oyez Project has put the Eldred v. Ashcroft audio online today. A streaming SMIL presentation is online in addition to MP3 files and an MPEG4 video of Prof. Lessig's recent talk at the Clio Society. MP3s are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, while the video is released under the Creative Commons NonCommercial license. Please download, mirror, or remix these files to your heart's content."

Thanks to TerraNova for pointing to a Yahoo press release revealing that "online world" Second Life now recognizes the ownership of in-world content made by subscribers. According to the press release, "The revised TOS allows subscribers to retain full intellectual property protection for the digital content they create, including characters, clothing, scripts, textures, objects and designs." As well as this, "Second Life has committed to exploring technologies to make it easy for creators to license their content under Creative Commons licenses", but, while these CC licenses are still being discussed, questions about the just-implemented IP issues are addressed at an official FAQ page on the Second Life site.

Yo Maing writes "According to this article at Wired magazine, students at the Berklee College of Music are being encouraged to share their audio and video works over p2p networks. The program is called Berklee Shares, and offers free music lessons for download. The downloads are licensed under the Creative Commons license, which has varying restrictions based their license builder page. Is this the music industry equivalent of the GPL?"