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'Open Source Media' vs 'Open Source Media, Inc'
Karl writes "Last week OSM (Open Source Media) launched to what some are calling an odd start. Most notably naming a controversy has ensued with Christopher Lydon's public radio show Open Source, a production of Open Source Media, Inc.."
hosts a jolly good current affairs/analysis podcast radio show. Search for Open Source in iTunes and you will find the podcast. Open Source refers to the openness of the production process and the source of the news rather than code. I found it whilst searching for podcasts about open source code, so the name was misleading to me, however the show has merit in it's own right and I am not bitter about having found it.
He hasn't. He's just a talk radio host on NPR. They chose the name "Open Source" because they felt that the format of their show reflected simlar values to Open Source ideals. It's also a bit of play on words. "Source" in this case means a News source. So the idea is that anyone can be News Source for the show, hence "Open Source."
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Like Charles Johnson and Michelle Malkin. Johnson runs Little Green Footballs, a website largely devoted to providing mouthbreathing bigots an opportunity to discuss how we ought to be wiping the "Islamofascists" off the earth by whatever means necessary. Malkin, on the other hand, is a shrill little lunatic who believes that its perfectly acceptable - nay, that it's morally incumbent upon us, - to inter and imprison whole classes of people based solely on racial and religious criteria. That these people may themselves have never been involved in, or entertained any ideas of, terrorist activity means nothing - if you're swarthy and/or Muslim, you're deserving of being locked up in the interests of US national security.
I don't mind conservatives speaking their minds and having opinons, but these people and their ilk are beyond the pale. Mass murder and inprisonment, just because you're afraid of what people who share the same ethnic or religious designation, that's irrational and completely unacceptable in a democratic state like the US. These people are no better than white supremacists - they've merely picked target groups that aren't taboo yet.
Christopher Lydon was the host on WBUR/NPR's "The Connection", one of the best radio interview/talk shows around. He left after a dispute with WBUR and spent some time at the Harvard Berkman Center, where he met Dave Winer and became a pioneer in podcasting by running a podcast interview show. His interviews are all available from his Berkman blog and they're consistently excellent (the breadth of the interviewees is substantial, including people such as Doc Searle, Paul Krugman, Larry Lessig, Jeffrey Sachs, Howard Dean, David Weinberger).
His company, Open Source Media, and the radio show are both very much inspired by open source values (e.g., openness, cooperation and sharing):
- All content is Creative Commons licensed (compare to OSM's obnoxious TOS).
- They actively interact with their audience through blogging.
- They involving the audience in show production (read How this works).
It doesn't seem like an unreasonable translation of the open source ethos to radio and media production within what's feasible.
I think his trademark case is pretty solid; he has a live registered mark (meaning the examiners have accepted it so they have the benefit of the doubt if someone claims it's not trademarkable) on Open Source as applied to a radio show and commentary website, and prior use of the trade name Open Source Media. The potential for confusion (the big criteria in TM issues) is substantial. OSM LLC, meanwhile uses all kinds of weaselly wording to handwave around the fact that they use the phrase "Open Source Media" as an alternate name for the operation everywhere while implying they're just "OSM" so that makes them not really infringing (if I started RH LLC but had the name "Red Hat" plastered all over my site and press releases, do you think I could be in a bit of a bind?).
I have no dog in this fight (except as a longtime fan of The Connection, which is not the same without Lydon), but there is really no contest IMO.
OK, OK, maybe it's a bit strange to post this comment on slashdot.org , but the point at which I got really cross about all this was the point at which the pajama party adopted the domain 'osm.org'. The .org top-level domain is, at least in theory, intended for non-commercial, non-governmental, non-academic use. By describing themselves as osm.org the pajamas are making an implied claim to be non-commercial, which is not true and is consequently false advertising. Yes, I know this applies to slashdot as well...
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.