Slashdot Mirror

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?"

limbicsystem writes "The first issue of the free journal Public Library of Science Biology hits the presses tonight. With Lawrence Lessig on the Board, the PLOS team are taking the Creative Commons to the world of science publishing and hope to compete with the big-name journals Science and Nature. The move towards freely-available scientific journals is supported by major funding bodies who are tired of seeing their grant money spent on subscriptions to commercial journals that can cost thousands of dollars a year. PLOS-Biology is available online at plos.org. The inagural issue has an essay by the executive director of the creative commons, Glen Otis Brown. Oh, and it's all running on Linux ;)"

jea6 writes "As seen on Fark and sure to intrest non-crossover Slashdotters, Magnatune is a record company with a catchy slogan. They highlight: 1) We're a record label. But we're not evil. 2) We call it 'try before you buy.' It's the shareware model applied to music. 3) Listen to hundreds of MP3'd albums from our artists. Or try our genre-based radio stations. 4) If you like what you hear, buy our music online for as little as $5 an album or license our music for commercial use. 5) Artists get a full 50% of the purchase price. And unlike most record labels, our artists keep their rights to their music. 6) Founded by musicians, for musicians. No major label connections. We are not evil. So if you are anti-RIAA (artist or consumer) and looking for an option (albeit a small option), this may be a start. The music is Creative Commons licensed, which is the brainchild of the eminent Lawrence Lessig."

briandonovan writes "World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Director Tim Berners-Lee and his compatriots would like to transform the current Web into a 'Semantic Web' where 'software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users' using 'structured collections of information and sets of inference rules.' The Resource Description Framework (RDF), designed as a language for expressing information about resources on the Web, and allied technologies are the result to date of ongoing efforts at the W3C to furnish Semantic Web proponents with the requisite tools. While it's far too early to predict whether TimBL's grand vision will be realized, RDF/XML (the XML serialization of RDF) is already in widespread use, having been incorporated into a surprising array of applications." Read on below for briandonovan's link-stuffed review of O'Reilly's Practical RDF. Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework author Shelley Powers pages 331 publisher O'Reilly & Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Brian Donovan ISBN 0596002637 summary Great introduction to RDF, an assortment of tools and utilities for working with RDF, and some real-world applications.

RDF first hit my radar screen a couple of years ago while I was working on a barebones tool to manage my personal website. I was writing the code to generate RSS feeds ("What is RSS?") for my site and had to choose whether to support RSS 0.9x (non-RDF) or RSS 1.0 (RDF-based) or both. Long story short: I went with RSS 1.0 and was able to implement the feeds, but never got any further into RDF afterwards. I couldn't make headway through the RDF-related working drafts rapidly enough to justify the time that I was spending, there weren't any worthwhile-looking books available at the time, and the few online tutorials that I found were sorely lacking -- possibly because the specs themselves were still evolving as the RDF Core Working Group hashed out some remaining issues.

Fast forward a few years: the dust in RDF-land seems to be settling a bit (although new working drafts of all of the current RDF specs were released on September 5th, most of the changes from previous versions appear to be relatively minor) and, with the publication of Shelley Powers' Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework, there's finally a good book available on the subject.

Overview After an introductory chapter that touches on the history of RDF and some applications of RDF/XML (the preferred, W3C-blessed serialization of RDF), the book is divided into three broad sections. In the first, the reader is guided through the raft of documentation produced by the RDF Core WG, including : Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Data Model, RDF/XML Syntax Specification, RDF Model Theory (formerly Semantics), and RDF Vocabulary Description Language 1.0: RDF Schema. Before moving on to Part II, where she surveys programming language support and tools available for working with RDF (with code snippets where appropriate), Powers spends a chapter developing an RDF vocabulary, "PostCon," that's used throughout the remainder of the book for demo purposes.

Chapter 7, the first in the tools-focused portion of Practical RDF is dedicated to (mostly Java-based) editors, parsers, validators, browsers, etc. for desktop use. Next, she dives into Jena, the Java RDF toolkit that began life as the labor of love of HP Labs researcher Brian McBride before being elevated to the status of a formal HP Labs project under their Semantic Web Research umbrella. Another HP Labs Semantic Web project, Damian Steer's BrownSauce, a slick little Java-based RDF browser, was introduced back in Chapter7. Means for manipulating RDF/XML in Perl (RDF::Core, part of Ginger Alliance's PerlRDF project), PHP (RAP, the RDF API for PHP), and Python (RDFLib) are addressed in Chapter 9. RDF query engines/languages are taken up next -- rdfDB QL, the query language of R.V. Guha's rdfDB (written in C); SquishQL, implemented in the Java-based Inkling query engine (built atop PostgreSQL); RDQL, used within Jena; and Sesame, a JSP/Servlet querying engine that supports both RDQL and its own query language, RQL, and can be deployed atop MySQL or PostgreSQL. Powers rounds out this part of her book with a chapter that deals briefly with the leftovers. Drive, an RDF API for C#, is briefly discussed along with RDF APIs for less fashionable programming languages : Nokia's Wilbur for CLOS, XOTcl for Tcl, and RubyRDF for Ruby. Redland, an RDF toolkit written in C with Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, and Tcl wrappers, is covered at some length (about half a dozen pages) and a couple more are given over to Redfoot, a Python RDF framework consisting of RDFLib (mentioned earlier in the Perl/PHP/Python chapter), a small-footprint HTTP server (according to the changelog at redfoot.net, they're using Medusa), and a native scripting language called Hypercode that lives within CDATA blocks in RDF/XML (example).

The last third of Practical RDF is devoted to uses of RDF and begins with a chapter on the OWL Web Ontology Language, an extension to RDF that's designed to supply more constraints for RDF vocabularies than can be provided by RDF Schema alone. This chapter would have been better situated after Chapter 5, which addresses RDF Schema, and feels a bit out of place here. RSS 1.0, the RDF-based syndication format, gets a chapter all of its own, beginning with a short synopsis of the evolution of RSS and the rift between the RSS 0.9x/2.0 and RSS 1.0 camps, progressing through descriptions of the RSS elements, some discussion of the use of modules, RSS autodiscovery, and aggregators (Amphetadesk, Meerkat, and NetNewsWire are mentioned), and finishing with an example RSS file (a syndicated list of book recommendations), producing RSS 1.0 using the Informa RSS Library (a set of Java classes), and merging two RSS 1.0 files using the XML::RSS Perl module. Two "Applications Based on RDF" (commercial and noncommercial) chapters top off the book. Noncommercial applications of RDF are visited first : Mozilla, where history and bookmarks, among other classes of information, are stored in RDF; the Creative Commons licensing scheme, whose proponents encourage content creators to embed RDF snippets into their documents and applications to provide information about the work itself and the restrictions placed on its reuse under the particular CC license that they've chosen; a Java and PostgreSQL based digital library system jointly developed by MIT and HP that uses RDF; and FOAF (Friend-of-a-Friend), an RDF vocabulary designed to express personal information and interpersonal relationships. Among the list of commercial applications utilizing RDF that comprises the final chapter in the book is Chandler, the same as yet very-alpha personal information manager that's managed to garner multiple mentions on this site.

The Verdict

The real meat of Practical RDF, for me, was in Chapters 1 through 6 (plus the OWL chapter, Chapter 12). This is not to say that the material in the last 2/3 of the book isn't useful or interesting. The section on RDF software tools is a great annotated survey of what's out there right now ... and I would imagine that installing and testdriving each of the software applications featured in those chapters must have been an extremely time-consuming process. The chapters describing real-world applications of RDF could be useful to someone trying to convince a manager that RDF is a viable, widely-used technology. Given a choice, though, I would rather have seen those pages spent on additional coverage of RDF, RDFS, and OWL with more example RDF vocabularies developed (like PostCon, which the author formulated, then refined through RDFS and OWL). The displaced material could have been made available online at the author's site for the book. A lot of that information will become less accurate over time as the software evolves and people come up with more applications for RDF anyway.

All nitpicking aside, though, if you're looking for a book on RDF, then you can't go wrong with Shelley Powers' Practical RDF.

You can purchase Practical RDF from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Eddan Katz writes "Stepping up the copyright battle on behalf of artists, EFF is hosting an event tonight called Digital Mix at the Black Box in Oakland. Between laptop music, hip hop, and illegal art films, speakers will talk about the Creative Commons sampling license and EFF's "Let the Music Play" campaign."

meta4 writes "After five years of pioneering the application of open source principles to stuff other than software, OpenContent is closing down. Project Lead David Wiley provides a rationale for the closing on the website, as well as a brief overview of the projects' successes. Wiley has joined Creative Commons as Project Lead for Educational Licensing."

meta4 writes "After five years of pioneering the application of open source principles to stuff other than software, OpenContent is closing down. Project Lead David Wiley provides a rationale for the closing on the website, as well as a brief overview of the projects' successes. Wiley has joined Creative Commons as Project Lead for Educational Licensing."

ebusinessmedia1 asks: "The California Open Source Textbook Project (COSTP) was created a few years ago in an attempt to help California's educational bureaucracy understand the value of open-sourced, K-12 textbook development, and we are an official collaborator with Creative Commons. COSTP could, within 6-8 years, save California up to $400M+ per year in K-12 textbook costs. (in addition to 100's-of-millions more saved in other states). We're looking for further ideas on how we might push this forward, promote it through something like the Connexions Project http://cnx.rice.edu/ at Rice University, work with enlightened for-profits on an open-source K-12 textbook model, get a test piloted, or somehow get the project bumped up a notch, funded, etc. Ideas anyone?"

"Our project has been lobbied/promoted to every level of government and education in California, from the Governor's office, and the legislature, on down. I hear 'this is a great idea' from many people in government, but not a single government agency or legislator (who agree the project has legs) - not even the California Teacher's Assn. - wants to promote it as an initiative in the legislature.

Nobody wants to upset the status quo, where commercial publishers - in a virtual oligopoly - create costly textbook products that have risen at three times the rate of inflation since 1992. It's not unusual for K-12 books to cost 2-3 times what books with similar content would cost in a trade (regular) bookstore."

X-Ross writes "As big labels battle it out in a Post-Napster world, open source comes to music ... Creative Commons has a feature on an open source style music site for artists launched by Sal Randolph. Here is the link to her site Opsound."

X-Ross writes "As big labels battle it out in a Post-Napster world, open source comes to music ... Creative Commons has a feature on an open source style music site for artists launched by Sal Randolph. Here is the link to her site Opsound."

Sam King writes "I found the following link on the lisnews.com site: O'Reilly Adopts 1790 Copyright Durations. A small but encouraging step taken by a publisher." We should provide direct links to O'Reilly's announcement and the Founder's Copyright website.

Slashback brings you another source for the Unix Haters' Handbook, along with more news on the Caldera v. IBM lawsuit and other updates on topics from XPde to creating a stained-glass computer. Read on below for the details.

Why Yes, you can sell the Free books. ProteusQ writes "Project Gutenberg has released a 'Best Of' CD, April 2003 Edition. The CD compilation is copyrighted and licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows unlimited non-commercial duplication and distribution. You can even sell it, provided that you share 20% of the gross profits with Project Gutenberg. It contains almost 500 books, and the 'Best Of' project itself based on the Open Source model. All of the work was performed by volunteers (mostly by me, in this case), with the goal of building a volunteer base to create about three editions per year."

Welcome to the American legal system, mind your footing. An anonymous reader submits: "In an e-mail discussion that took place 24 and 25 April, SCO-Caldera Senior Vice President Chris Sontag told MozillaQuest Magazine that there is SCO-owned code in Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions. He also told MozillaQuest Magazine that the tainted code is not in the Linux kernel that Linus [Torvalds] and others have helped develop. We're talking about what's on the periphery of the Linux kernel."

On this topic, Random BedHead Ed writes "IBM has released its denial of SCO Group's charges that it borrowed proprietary UNIX code in its development of the GNU/Linux system. Story at News.com.com.com.etc. The battle continues.

Also, check out PCLinuxOnline.com for a good summary of the events thus far. They also have a Boycott SCO page if you're interested."

The height of practicality. Jerami Campbell writes "I just saw your article in Slashdot 'Building a stained glass computer case?' I have made several stained glass computer cases, I thought you might be interested in checking them out. You can see all of my cases at lucentrigs.com. I will have a new one finished in a couple of days. It is black glass with a red lava lamp mounted in the front."

Gun buffs have well-adjusted sights. In regards to the MP3-player-in-a-rifle-magazine posted the other day, Mat S. writes "I would be reaaaaally surprised if this fit a standard AK-47, as it is an SVD (Russian infantry rifle, as opposed to the AK, which is in fact a carbine, although called an assault rifle) mag. It accommodates much more powerful ammo, and the cartridges are about 50% longer than the AK's. Thank you for your attention. I still WANT this player. Might be a bit on the heavy side, though. this case is stamped steel, about 3 mm thick :)"

Fair and balanced, naturally. An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who were unable to obtain the Microsoft propaganda about Unix, it's up at MIT."

Note for the humorless: the UHH is not "Microsoft propaganda."

The best Congress money can buy. If you thought Hilary Rosen writing Iraq's copyright law was an isolated incident, don't worry, she's not alone. theodp writes "The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand to make it clear to government officials that the pressure to enforce U.S. laws against pirating of music and movies 'is a unified message coming from all levels of the U.S. government.' Watchdog groups say the trip may have violated House ethics rules, and one is calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he could have used committee funds to pay for the trip but, 'I thought I would save the taxpayers some money on this.'"

Thanks a bundle.

A considerate way to fool your friends and family. We've mentioned the blink-twice Trompe L'Oeil Windows-looking desktop XPde a few times before; now xexen writes "On April 26th 2003, I received an email. The XPde Team released XPde 0.3.5, a major upgrade to the XPde desktop environment and window manager. Check out the announcement, view the screenshots, or read the detailed ChangeLog."

Build up your frequent flyer miles. A few weeks ago we mentioned that the proceedings of the most recent linux.conf.au (a Linux gathering Down Under) were available as an ISO; hemos, who was on hand at the conference, passes on word that the CDs have been sent out, and points to some more info on the next LCA.

alansz writes "The O'Reilly and Associates Open Books Project has been around for a while, and I've just received a letter from Tim about the next step" Read on if you are interested in the creative commons, and how O'Reilly authors are being asked to take part. Alansz continues, "ORA authors are being encouraged to allow ORA to self-limit their copyright to the Founders' Copyright (14 years with one 14-year extension possible), and to allow ORA to distribute their out-of-print (or post-Founder's Copyright) books to the public using the Creative Commons Attribution license (you can freely copy and distribute the work and derivatives, as long as you attribute the work to the author and ORA). Author agreement is required in order for ORA to transfer rights to Creative Commons.

The letter included a handy FAQ about author options (allow assignment to Creative Commons, stick with the usual maximum copyright deal, or have three months to try to find another publisher when the book goes out-of-print and allow assignment to CC if you don't). The letter also notes that different editions of books count as different works, so your latest edition can still be selling commercially and earlier editions can be released as open books.

(For my out-of-print ORA book, I'm going to allow them to assign the rights to CC and make it freely available. It's great to see a publisher thinking about copyright this way, but it's no more than I'd expect from the good folks at ORA.)"

Orasis writes "The Open Content Network is a collaborative effort to help deliver open source, public domain, and Creative Commons-licensed content using peer-to-peer technology. The network is essentially a huge 'virtual web server' that links together thousands of computers for the purpose of helping out over-burdened/slashdotted web sites. Any existing mirror or web site can easily join the OCN by tweaking the HTML on their site."

scubacuda writes "Arnold Kling, in his article, Content is Crap, writes, 'While there are many Net-heads who share Dan Gillmor's [and Larry Lessig's] enthusiasm for Creative Commons, I do not. It has little or no significance, because it is based on a strikingly naive 60's-retro ideological view of how content intermediaries function.' He compares artists' works to, well, raw sewage that publishers filter into something that can be later consumed by the public. 'What Creative Commons lets you do as an author is label your stuff before you flush it down the toilet.' Kling points to Bayesian Intermediaries (filters based on flexible keyword weights and 'trained' by user preferences) and weblogs as good ways to filter out the drivel that many content creators produce. (Dan Gilmore and Siva Vaidhayanatha respond, to which Kling responds in his blog."

Rob from RPI writes "After a long wait, Cory Doctorow's first novel is out. If you're into SciFi, you've probably read some of his stories - a recent short of his on Salon.com (0wnz0red) was recently mentioned here. With a highly popular blog, and a good amount of Net-Clues, he's also doing a bit of groundbreaking with the release of this book. He's selling it, and, distributing it under a Creative Commons licence at the same time. You can download it in TXT, HTML and PDF here. It's a very good book, too 8-)"

Luke Francl writes "On December 16, the Creative Commons is unveiling their commons licenses. Well, their website is up a little early Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages debating the merits of the GPL verus the OPL versus the FDL verus the public domain ad infinitum. By answering three simple questions, the Creative Commons web application selects an appropriate license for you. You can give it a try at the Choose a License page. They've also got a list of all the Creative Commons licenses." Peter Wayner has released his book Free For All under the license.

Luke Francl writes "On December 16, the Creative Commons is unveiling their commons licenses. Well, their website is up a little early Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages debating the merits of the GPL verus the OPL versus the FDL verus the public domain ad infinitum. By answering three simple questions, the Creative Commons web application selects an appropriate license for you. You can give it a try at the Choose a License page. They've also got a list of all the Creative Commons licenses." Peter Wayner has released his book Free For All under the license.

Luke Francl writes "On December 16, the Creative Commons is unveiling their commons licenses. Well, their website is up a little early Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to give away some of their rights under copyright law without wading through hundreds of pages debating the merits of the GPL verus the OPL versus the FDL verus the public domain ad infinitum. By answering three simple questions, the Creative Commons web application selects an appropriate license for you. You can give it a try at the Choose a License page. They've also got a list of all the Creative Commons licenses." Peter Wayner has released his book Free For All under the license.

Okay, here are answers from Paul Jones, director of ibiblio.org. You asked, and he responded -- and not always as seriously as you'd expect from someone who can ask us to call him "Professor Jones" or "Doctor Jones." But he's really "Just Paul," he says, "even in class." We hope a whole lot of you have a chance to meet Paul in person one day, because he's not only a warm and friendly guy, but one who has done a whole lot of good for Linux -- and for the Internet in general.

Paul:
Let me start out with a little overview of sunsite.unc.edu/metalab.unc.edu. Or better yet to point you to our annotated timeline. Then say that ibiblio.org began and has continued to be a way for the University of North Carolina (the original and still the best) to explore information sharing in the context of our missions of education, research and outreach. You folks using and contributing are the outreach part. In particular, we "acquire, discover, preserve, synthesize, and transmit knowledge" with all of your help.

We are a joint project of the School of Information and Library Science (there we are involved in digital archives and digital libraries), The School of Journalism and Mass Communication (there we are involved in electronic publishing and multimedia sharing), and the Vice Chancellor for Information Technology.

Except for one and occasionally two full time employees, our entire staff consists of students or in my case part time (as I have faculty responsibilities). So be nice to all of us, we're always learning. No matter what Robin said in the article introducing me, none of this would have happened without some very good people on staff and contributing content.

But that brings us to:

Question of Money
by too_bad
One of the things that people frequently ask about sites like ibiblio.org is "They are great. But how long will they be around?" Do you see this as a concern (esp. after the LWN announcement) and do you have any comments regarding this. Are there any good approaches you suggest (like augmenting free usership with voluntary subscriptions, etc) for such free sites in general?

Paul:
We have been very lucky, since our beginning, to have generous and understanding support from The University of North Carolina and from sponsors large and small including Sun, IBM, Red Hat, VA Linux^h^h^h^h^hSoftware, Mandrake, Cisco and others.

We also do get some research contracts and grants, but most importantly for us in the past two years has been a large gift from the founders of Red Hat and the Center for the Public Domain.

We have some top secret international funding sources as well. At the moment, we actually have a small endowment that if spent wisely should last several years. It is my hope that we will never have to charge the patrons of our digital archives.

BUT this brings me to my favorite question, which only got a rating of 4:

Donations?
by Anonymous Coward
Where do I send the cheque?

Paul:
Send your or your organization's tax-deductible contributions to:

Ibiblio.org
Campus Box 3456
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3456

Moving on to:

Typical Questions
by suwain_2
I've downloaded my share of things, and find that the 3 Mbps cap on my cable modem is almost always my bottleneck. So my question is fairly simple (albeit broad) -- can you describe your setup a bit, in terms of bandwidth (both what you have for an Internet connection, and how much traffic you actually use), servers, storage (I'd venture to guess it's to the tune of several terabytes?), etc.

Paul:
We're on UNC's network. Our connections to the commodity and Internet2 networks are served by UNC's OC-48 network connection. We maintain a constant throughput of network traffic outbound in the 160-180Mbits/sec range.

Our current main servers were donated by IBM and serve content from a central fileserver with 2TB of disk attached. In our racks, we have approximately 5TB of space (with system disks, Sourceforge and an Internet2/Distributed Storage Initiative node). We do some load balancing between streaming services, web services, and large downloads like distros. On a typical day, we move over 1.5 terabytes of data off our servers. (Thanks to Fred Stutzman for much of this info.)

Backups
by Chris Pimlott
What's your backup strategy? I imagine it's hard to deal with both so much data as well as being under constant bombardment from clients around the world. How often is data archived? Have you had any major data loss incidents and, if so, how well were you able to deal with them?

Paul:
Like everyone else we rely on Archive.org, but seriously... (Fred answers this since he did the restore).

We run managed backups on UNC's enterprise storage facilities. We run them every night and have incremental backups for three months. UNC uses StorageTek machines and Tivoli Distributed Storage Manager for enterprise backups. We have had major data loss incidents, in which a raid card failed and lost the array's configuration. One of the disks in the array died simultaneously, we were unable to re-import the configuration to the new card, so we had to restore from backup, which took a number of days.

I, Paul, can only say that in the past things were much worse and we did have one famous meltdown in 1995 that was not pretty. Since then the UNC enterprise backup has been our friend - and for the most part disks and RAID arrays have been increasingly more reliable.

What's your biggest area?
by Otter
I know ibiblio (I still think of it as SunSite) as a) a repository of Unix software, especially useful for pre-Freshmeat apps and b) a mirror provider. "Free online publisher" wouldn't have made the list, but looking at your main page I see all sorts of things I didn't realize you hosted. Which ones get the most traffic?

Paul:
For sheer bytes, ISOs rule. But then it doesn't take too many downloads to get a lot of bytes for an ISO. Source-based distros like Gentoo have seen a lot of activity lately.

One of our most visited sites is also one of our oldest, Nicholas Pioch's WebMuseum (originally WebLouvre). An amusing reason may be that, as Nicolas writes:

"I've just found out that Microsoft Encarta Deluxe 2001 (the copy I just happened to find out and install) has direct links ('Web Links') from each artist's article to the webmuseum (on metalab.unc.edu at the time) and that's actually the only weblink provided in that 2001 edition."

Among other favorites are:

• The Linux Documention Project, which began on sunsite
• Documenting the American South
• Hong Kong Picture Archive
• Henriette's Herbal Homepage
• Hyperwar A hypertext history of the Second World War

What about content producers?
by Fluid Donkey
In general how supportive have you found the producers of such content to be of your services? Do many if any really believe that something like this will cause them to starve to death?

Paul:
First, they are all with us voluntarily and can leave any time, taking their stuff with them. That alone pretty much says that they believe in what we are helping them do.

I should say also that not all material is copyleft. But all of it is free to view, listen to and to reference. We are working with Creative Commons, which we also host, to develop a small but viable set of licenses for folks including our contributors who want to share their work on various terms (attribution, home or personal use, educational use, etc).

One important contributor, Roger McGuinn, has been making one folk song a month available for download since November 1995 on his Folk Den. He also sells CDs and performs concerts. He seems to be doing pretty well. Many contributors are scholars or students who understand the importance of sharing information.

Dave Farley, who does the wonderful Dr Fun, has a book contract with Plan 9, and we're looking forward to seeing what we've seen in electrons in print.

Relative importance of different material?
by kafka93
What is the center's view on the publishing of material that might be considered "offensive" or "dangerous", and does the center make subjective judgements upon the importance of one piece of intellectual property over another on the basis of 'artistic worth', 'decency', etc.? With only limited resources available to promote the archiving of data, is there the risk that important fringe documents may be left by the wayside, or ignored due to political/social concerns?

Paul:
Like non-digital archives and libraries, we have a Collection Policy. You'll note that we do not explicitly ban materials for content nor do we plan to. We do not maintain materials that are illegal, slanderous, libelous, or otherwise prohibited by law. Ultimately the contributors are responsible for their content and we do not review the content once a project is taken on.

Most rejections of content come about because the content is too commercial, just personal, or relies on advertising.

Metadata and easy searching
by RyanMuldoon
iBiblio stands out as an excellent repository for a wide range of culturally valuable resources. As it and other sites grow in size, the importance of good searching and indexing becomes extremely relevant. Have you given any thought to how you might want to cope with this? Specifically, are there any metadata schemata that you are considering using? I would love to see iBiblio be used more like a content feed to research/cross-referencing applications.

Paul:
Interesting that you asked about this as this is an area that we've been working in for the past couple of years. Actually we go way back to pre-Web metadata to the Internet Anonymous FTP Archive (IAFA) files which were the model for the Linux Software Map (LSM). Thanks to Jonathan Magid for this innovation and for suggesting that we host Linux in the very beginning.

When we designed our contributor-maintained Collection Index, we designed it to create and display metadata that could be shared via the Open Archives Initiative (OAI). Please note that this metadata is at the collection level - not at the item level. Item level metadata is for future work. Also since you asked: Miles Efron and I will be presenting a paper at the Digital Resource in the Humanities conference in September on the Problem of Access in Contributor-Run Digital Libraries. Serena Fenton is co-author to this paper.

On the Linux Documentation Project front, we worked with several others to create the Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF).

The OMF aims to collect data about Open Source documentation, or metadata, that will be used to describe the documentation. The idea is that the OMF will act as a sophisticated card catalog type of system for the numerous Open Source documentation projects that exist. The OMF offers a number of advantages over standard card catalog type systems, however. Chief among these is the fact that the OMF has been designed from the ground up to be completely open, standards based, and sharable. We will accomplish this by using pre-defined standards (XML and the Dublin Core description for metadata) and allowing all metadata generated to be accessed by anyone that wants it. Because the metadata itself is to be stored in XML files, anyone should be able to use it.

OMF support is included in the Scrollkeeper project. Note that none of these metadata designs are overly complex. That is by design. The idea is to keep the metadata simple enough to be understood by the creator of the digital item or collection that it describes. If I could make one strong point about metadata design it is that simplicity is the key - and the hardest thing to pull off.

Trust metric and online publishing
by Creosote
I heard you talk at the Southern Presses conference last year about the use of trust metrics (like Slashdot's karma and Advogato's peer certification) as a possible alternative to the "top-down" means of filtering that scholarly and commercial publishers use, namely formal peer review and mass marketing, respectively. Are you more or less optimistic about the long-term viability of this model then you were then? (Especially in light of the powerful efforts to keep control of the gates we're seeing these days from Hollywood, the recording industry, and their political allies...)

Paul:
Beginning here I am speaking personally and not on behalf of ibiblio.org or any of its sponsors or supporters including but not limited to the University of North Carolina.

The Blog is one example of creator-empowerment that has gotten more attention since that talk and I think there will be plenty more examples to come. I still believe that people in constant communications will result in "Smart Mobs" (thank you, Howard Rheingold, for naming and noticing and writing on this). This is not just about music or movies or about one country or even one age group. While I don't think that we will completely replace our reliance, however reluctant, on Mickey Mouse, I do think that we are entering a time in which there are new opportunities for us to share information and to work together. The slew of misguided efforts by media and information cartels, especially the RIAA, which demonize their customers and clients, will make things tough but they also are signs that the old solutions are not working well and that newer, and I hope more inclusive and more open, solutions are on the horizon.

GeekPAC and "When Congress Attacks"
by lunenburg
I noticed that you are one of the founders of the American Open Technology Consortium and/or GeekPAC - the lobbying group that got a bit of fanfare a few months back when it was formed, but has been pretty quiet since then. With Congress launching seemingly daily attacks on our technological freedom in order to support the revenue models of a few huge businesses, the need for a voice in Washington is growing urgent. Is the AOTC/GeekPAC working to get our voices heard? Is there a need for an umbrella group to tie together various groups like GeekPAC, Public Knowledge, Digital Consumer, etc.?

Paul:
Yes, (again speaking only as Paul) I am an officer of the American Open Technology Consortium (AOTC). But for various complex reasons, I am not a member of GeekPAC. As you might have guessed, getting these projects going has been no simple matter. Jeff Gerhard has been doing a wonderful job of making sure the legal and procedural steps are properly taken. So far, what you are seeing is some very motivated but very busy people learning how to work together to get the projects off the ground. The good news is that folks like Jeff, Doc Searles and others on the boards are smart, dedicated and experienced people who can and will play well with others (including Public Knowledge and Digital Consumer and EFF). We hope to represent slightly different voices than those already represented. If you are reading this, you know who you are and we need your help.

About the umbrella group, I think that a summit conference (or at least a summit listserv) would make more sense. This kind of looser structure, often called an Action Committee or Organizing Committee, has been very successfully used by both ends of the political spectrum in the past half century.

Two words...
by Anonymous Coward
DRM? Palladium?

What's your take on these two technologies?

Are you afraid they'll ultimately destroy what you have been working for, for the past 10 years? If not, why?

Optional question: What about the copyright extension we have seen?

Another optional question: Linux... or BSD? =)

Paul:
Not Linux vs BSD, but Digital Rights Management and Microsoft's Palladium. DMR is the general term for the groups of solutions to the need for creators to be compensated for their work while allowing their audience to easily access those works. Or at least that would be ideally what DRM should do.

When DRM goes wrong, it tramples on the rights of the citizens to have access to information that they have legally purchased, want to criticize, parody, legally reuse or share.

When DRM goes wrong, it creates barriers to innovation and creativity. It biases access and reproduction of information to only certain technologies.

When DRM goes wrong, it creates and perpetrates closed markets and monopolies.

When DRM goes wrong, everyone suffers. It takes us back to the Stationers Guild, a response to the printing press. "The Stationers Guild obtained monopoly rights in the printing and probably distribution of all books, a monopoly codified by the Tudors in a licensing system aimed at censoring religious dissent" which lasted until the early 1700s.

When DRM goes wrong, it is called Palladium.

The good news is that Palladium is vaporware - so far.

What is your greatest success/failure?
by burgburgburg
Simple enough question in two parts:

Looking back on 10 years of doing this, what would classify as your greatest success, and your greatest failure?

Paul:
The simplest question is the hardest, of course. Luckily, you've narrowed the success/failure question to deal only with sunsite/metalab/ibiblio and not the past 10 years of my life.

One mark of great success is that we are still here hosting some of the original collections of information to be shared on the Net including the first 7/24 radio simulcast on the net, WXYC. We've been a part of many innovations and I, personally, have been able to work with some brilliant folks who often surprised themselves with what they had accomplished. We're also funded and we enjoy support from some wonderful and diverse faculties at UNC.

There is no question in my mind that the most significant decision that I made in those ten years was to listen to Jonathan Magid when he suggested that we become the US site for an operating system that didn't even work yet - Linux. If you are reading this far and are happy, you owe Jonathan. If you are unhappy, blame me.

In research, there is no such thing as failure. As I was explaining to our Interim Vice Chancellor, we are supposed to make mistakes. As Ms. Frizzle says, "Take chances, get messy and EXPLORE! Wahoo!".

Still, I do wish that we had found a way to use WAIS or another distributed search engine in a way that is still useful. There still seems to me to be something unfinished in that area. Killing gopher. That was more fun than Wack-a-mole.

And one final answer:

Slack.
by dsb3
You host a slew of subgenius content, so it must be asked ... do you have slack?

Paul:
While I do not profess to completely comprehend slack, I have been assured by members of the Church that I do have it.

whitefox writes: "The Seattle Times has an interesting article in today's edition on what is public domain. After sharing the experience one software writer had with businesses and people shying away from BitTorrent because they didn't understand the concept of 'public domain,' they take the reader on a tour of how public domain is being defined by groups such as Creative Commons and to the battle of copyright-extensions in Eldred v. Ashcroft."

mpawlo writes "Creative Commons just opened to the public. From the initial statement: "We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works." Read also the article in the New York Times." There's also an older story that summarizes the concept behind the site, although I think their FAQ's do a pretty good job. A page at the Berkman Center documents some of the development of the project (although it doesn't render properly in konqueror for whatever reason). rbeattie describes it like so: "At O'Reilly's ongoing Emerging Technology Conference today, Creative Commons gave a presentation about their new service, an "easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution." They've provided an online wizard where you can choose the type of license and restrictions you want to put on your work, and then they'll provide a circled CC logo you can put on your website with links to the license. In addition they are providing search functionality for those looking for public domain content - the license is provided in "machine readable form" (read: XML probably) so that it can be easily indexed/searched."

mpawlo writes "Creative Commons just opened to the public. From the initial statement: "We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works." Read also the article in the New York Times." There's also an older story that summarizes the concept behind the site, although I think their FAQ's do a pretty good job. A page at the Berkman Center documents some of the development of the project (although it doesn't render properly in konqueror for whatever reason). rbeattie describes it like so: "At O'Reilly's ongoing Emerging Technology Conference today, Creative Commons gave a presentation about their new service, an "easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution." They've provided an online wizard where you can choose the type of license and restrictions you want to put on your work, and then they'll provide a circled CC logo you can put on your website with links to the license. In addition they are providing search functionality for those looking for public domain content - the license is provided in "machine readable form" (read: XML probably) so that it can be easily indexed/searched."

cmuncey writes: "Lawrence Lessig's newest effort is profiled this morning in a SFGate.com article this morning. Creative Commons will offer customizable flexible intellectual property licenses that can be used by artists, writers, and others in moving their works from copyright to public domain in a controlled manner. The aricle also cites plans to create a 'conservancy' for what looks like orphanware. This is a joint work of Lessig and people from MIT, Duke, Harvard and Villanova."