Lessig

So my family and I have arrived at the American Academy in Berlin where I'll be spending the year writing and hiding (mainly). (More on the hiding part later). My 3 year old (as of Thursday!) seems not to have as flexible an internal clock as his dad. This is the first morning he's slept past 2am. I should have polled for tricks for dealing with this in advance.

Check out webcitation.org -- a project run at the University of Toronto. The basic idea is to create a permanent URL for citations, so that when the Supreme Court, e.g., cites a webpage, there's a reliable way to get back to the webpage it cited. They do this by creating a reference URL, which then will refer back to an archive of the page created when the reference was created. E.g., I entered the URL for my blog ("http://lessig.org/blog"). It then created an archive URL "http://www.webcitation.org/5IlFymF33". Click on it and it should take you to an archive page for my blog.

Why, you might ask, would you ever want to substitute that long ugly URL for the short and spiffy http://lessig.org/blog? Well first, and most obviously if you've ever written something for publication, URLs are not always short and spiffy. Second, the point is to create an archive of a page at a particular moment.

A bunch of us have been talking about a service like this for sometime. One idea we had been talking about was a slight modification: Rather than a link that always took you to the archive, the link would first check whether the page referenced is still there unchanged. If so, it would give you that page; if not, it would take you to the archive. Difficulty with this is dynamic pages.

It would be fantastic if the consortium running this would keep a publicly accessible archive of the URLs they generate tied to the original URL -- so if the service goes bunk, there's a way to recover the original URL. And someone should write an app that could sit on a toolbar -- ArchiveMe -- and when clicked, generated the URL (and put it in the copy/paste field).

But these are quibbles: This is a very cool project, really really needed.

From Boing Boing: "Last week, I received the most remarkable letter from Jamie, a US Navy seaman stationed on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea ..."

This, this weekend, here in Berlin. Hop a plane. Very cool event.

So I'm just finishing the page proofs on Code v2. As you recall (pretend if you don't), one theme of Code was that commerce would develop tools to facilitate better regulability of the Net. I take a break to check the email account at the Academy. The Academy is using a hosted Gmail system. A Gmail add tells me about "DidTheyReadIt.com." This service will allow you to determine whether someone read an email you sent them, how long they kept the message open, and from where they read it. It is trivially easy to use (you add their address to the address you're sending, e.g., xxx@xxx.com.didtheyreadit.com), and it adds a bug to the message that tracks exactly how the message is used.

Wow.

This Thursday, September 14 at 5PM (SL/Pacific), PopSci.com and Creative Commons will be hosting a concert in Second Life featuring Jonathan Coulton as well as popular Second Life musicians Melvin Took, Kourosh Eusebio, Etherian Kamaboko, and Slim Warrior. From Jonathan Coulton's blog:

I will be playing live from a secure, undisclosed location in the real world, but you will see my handsome avatar onstage at a venue called Menorca in the Second Life universe. You can also listen to the concert via a number of streaming type websites … The whole concert, audio and video, will be Creative Commons licensed, so feel free to record it.

More information is available on this wiki.

Recall Sun's decision to GPL the hardware-level design for its latest SPARC chips? Now here in Europe, there's a plant shipping silicon using the design. (Thanks, Jim!)

Allen Sandquist is a photographer. He has a Flickr account. His photos are posted on the Flickr account under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial license. More than 8 months ago, he posted this very cool photo on his site:

The image generated a bunch of great comments.

Two weeks ago, Allen posted a comment about this picture:

That was published in AutoWeek on July 24, 2006. As you'll notice, the second is a derivative of the first.

Allen wrote AutoWeek the following:

Hello Mr. Ross,

I'm a freelance photographer in Henderson, Nevada. A couple of nights ago, I was searching the web and found that a photograph that I had taken, was used by AutoWeek in the July 24, 2006 issue ("This Week's Sign The Automotive Apocalypse Is Nigh", see attached pictures). I was never contacted for permission to publish this picture and was not given credit as the photographer. I usually charge $250-$500 for commercially used images. I believe $250.00 would be sufficient for this example.

I am a fan of AutoWeek as my barber subscribes to the magazine. The articles are informative and the pictures are great.

AutoWeek's Mir. Ross responded:

Mr. Sandquist, this image was obtained through the savethe76ball.com uncredited and in public domain. Our customary payment for this type of shot is $50.

A friend of Allen then tried to intervene by writing to AutoWeek. Mr. Ross again replied to Allen:

At this point I am advised that I must see a Copy Right Registration for the photo in question before any payment can be considered.

Ok, so where's Jack Valenti when you need him?

First, as the author of "savethe76ball.com" confirmed to Allen in an email, "they didn't get your pic off our site!"

Second, there is an almost zero chance this photo is "in the public domain." The only possible photos of the "76 ball" that could be in the public domain (at least without a public domain dedication) are those taken before 1978. I take it few 76 stations were selling gas at $2.19/gallion before 1977.

Finally, as a photo editor at AutoWeek certainly knows, Allen's copyright in this image does not depend upon his registering the work with the copyright office. His copyright is automatic. So the idea that AutoWeek would say in effect "we'll pay you $50 for a photo after you spend $45 to register it" is to add insult to injury.

Mr. Ross needs some educating at least about decency, and perhaps about copyright law (though I suspect he knows well enough that what he did here was wrong). The license Allen published his photo under says (1) don't use this for commercial purposes without asking me, and (2) give me credit. AutoWeek did neither. Perhaps others would like to help Mr. Ross understand why that's just wrong. He's at kross at crain dot com.

You might have seen the article by RFK Jr. in Rolling Stone asking, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? It is a terrifying but powerful piece that makes it hard to believe what we all want to believe about the 2004 election.

Now come three researchers from Princeton to demonstrate how one could hack a Diebold machine and undetectably alter the election results. This is a video of their results:

You can read the full report here.

(Thanks, Ken!)

So one of the weirder things I've heard people say is that they believe/want Oprah to run for President. Nutty friends, here's a clue: Her production company is threatening to sue a website trying to promote her candidacy.

From Eric at CC:

Visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's website to download "The Concert," a new classical music podcast offered under the Creative Commons Music Sharing license. The podcast features unreleased live performances by master musicians and talented young artists recorded from the museum's Sunday Concert Series. "The Concert" includes music by Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and Chopin for solo piano, orchestra, string quartet, and voice. A new podcast will be posted on the 1st and 15th of every month; users can subscribe to receive free, automatic updates delivered directly to their computers or mp3 players. With "The Concert," the Gardner Museum becomes the first art museum to encourage sharing and free distribution of its online programming by using a Creative Commons license.

You can read more about this exciting news in CC's press release.

I am told by Allen that a very respectful AutoWeek executive called to apologize. The mistake was an intern's. They have reached an amicable settlement.

These guys are doing amazingly good stuff, and using a CC DevNat license to spread it freely within the developing world.

Buy tickets

So there was a flurry of concern last week because of the announcement that Microsoft's new Zune would wrap all content in DRM. Turns out that was a mistake. All content is not wrapped by default. The wrapping applies to DRMed content only. Thus, the device would not appear to interfere with the CC anti-DRM clause.

Like just about everybody, I'm a big Wikipedia fan. (Indeed, Code v2 is dedicated to the project.) And so I was extremely happy to read that Aaron Swartz is running for the board. Aaron was one of the early architects of CC. But his talent is much more than technical. He is a brilliantly independent and clear thinker; takes bullshit from no one; and has a deep and reflective view about all things Net. I'm sure this is true of more than one person, but he would make an outstanding addition to the board.

Wired is sponsoring another Creative Commons Benefit Concert at at Irving Plaza, on September 29. This is the second time Wired's done this. The first time, the artists (Gilberto Gil and David Byrne) were inspiration to many in the movement. This time the artists are practitioners of remix culture: Mike Patton's experimental pop supergroup Peeping Tom, DJ/producer Diplo, and mash-up/remix artist Girl Talk.

All (as in 100% with no deduction at all) of the proceeds go to Creative Commons. Tickets are $25 each (plus service charge) and are available online at Ticketmaster.

The event is a part of Next Music, which kicks off WIRED NextFest, a four-day festival featuring more than 130 interactive exhibits from scientists and researchers from around the world.

Read about it here.

Mimi Ito is conducting a survey of AMV creators and their practices. Read more here.

David Goodger has created this SVG. The source is available here. This image is licensed CC BY-NC-SA. Others at his site are in the public domain.

Before the concert on Friday night, I'll be on stage at the NYPL with my boss (one of many), Chris Anderson. This is the second time I've read his book; I liked it the first time; it gets better each time. It should be an interesting event. Tickets here.

The Free Software Foundation has launched a public discussion on proposed changes to the Free Document License, a license designed "can be used for any textual work" but which, in the world enriched by Wikipedia, now attempts to license all creative work. I'll be studying the changes carefully, and will post my own comments, both here and there, but I really would encourage people to do the same. Please spread the word broadly.

This step continues the process the FSF launched with the GPLv3. And while that license has become increasingly controversial (see the Kernel Developers' post, the FSF's response, Linus Torvald's latest), there should be no controversy about the good work of FSF in running this licensing process so transparently. They've got very cool (GPLd) code enabling the public comments. We at CC are keen to get our hands on it (it's not yet distributed) to use in later revisions of our licenses. (We've done comments before, but the old fashioned way).

The real challenge here will be Richard Stallman's. His work helped launch important movements of freedom -- free software, most directly; free culture, through inspiration, and examples such as Wikipedia. It also helped launch a movement he's not happy about, the Open Source Software Movement. Much of the latter builds on the former. And these movements have been joined by many who share his values, some more, some less. (Again, see Torvalds). These movements have built much more than he, or any one person, could ever have done. So his challenge is whether he evolves these licenses in ways that fit his own views alone, recognizing those views deviate from many important parts of the movement he started. Or whether he evolves these licenses to support the communities they have enabled. This is not a choice of principle vs compromise. It is a choice about what principle should govern the guardians of these licenses.

I was struck as I've been thinking about this by an obvious analogy: At a recent launch of Creative Commons licenses in a Latin American country, an artist described what it was like to watch her work remixed on ccMixter. As she described, at first "it is mine"; then it becomes "less mine." When "less mine," it would be wrong, she suggested, for the artist to exercise the complete and personal control over the object as when it was just "mine."

E.g., we all (should) see why it's wrong for the Margaret Mitchell estate to threaten remixers of "Gone with the Wind" with lawsuits, that story having become so central to the culture of America, and especially the American south. Though I would certainly have supported her effort to sue a publisher who changed a final chapter when the book was first published. This difference in attitudes about ownership is, imho, all the difference in the world -- hardest for the artists, or "owners" as some people like to say, to recognize.

YouTube has announced:

Sophisticated tools to help content owners identify their content on the site;
(1) Automated audio identification technology to help prevent works previously removed from the site at the request of the copyright owner from reappearing on the site;
(2) The opportunity to authorize and monetize the use of their works within the user-generated content on the site;
(3) Reporting and tracking systems for royalties, etc.

This is going to get very interesting.

The British Council and Counterpoint has a new publication, "Unbounded Freedom: A Guide to Creative Commons Thinking for Cultural Organizations," written by Rosemary Bechler. The book will be launched Friday. There's a discussion page on the author's blog, which begins with a useful post addressing the question: "So why did I choose to licence my work in this way?"

Yehuda Berlinger has a very clever remix of the U.S. IP Code -- rendering both copyright law and patent law in verse. Now only if it were better licensed, someone might add some melody...

One of the most important conclusions that can be drawn from the work of Benkler, von Hippel, Weber (my review of both is here), and many others is that the Internet has reminded us that we live not just in one economy, but at least two. One economy is the traditional "commercial economy," an economy regulated by the quid pro quo: I'll do this (work, write, sing, etc.) in exchange for money. Another economy is (the names are many) the (a) amateur economy, (b) sharing economy, (c) social production economy, (d) noncommercial economy, or (e) p2p economy. This second economy (however you name it, I'm just going to call it the "second economy") is the economy of Wikipedia, most FLOSS development, the work of amateur astronomers, etc. It has a different, more complicated logic too it than the commercial economy. If you tried to translate all interactions in this second economy into the frame of the commercial economy, you'd kill it.

Having now seen the extraordinary value of this second economy, I think most would agree we need to think lots about how best to encourage it -- what techniques are needed to call it into life, how is it sustained, what makes it flourish. I don't think anyone knows exactly how to do it well. Those living in real second economy communities (such as Wikipedia) have a good intuition about it.

But a second and also extremely difficult problem is how, or whether, the economies can be linked. Is there a way to cross over from the commercial to second economy? Is there a way to manage a hybrid economy -- one that tries to manage this link.

The challenge of the hybrid economy is what Mozilla, RedHat, Second Life, MySpace are struggling with all the time. How can you continue to inspire the creative work of the second economy, while also expanding the value of the commercial economy? This is, in my view, a different challenge from the challenge of how you call this second economy into being, but obviously, they are related. But this challenge too is one I don't think anyone yet understands fully.

As I watch Creative Commons develop, I've been encouraged by the experiments that try to find a way to preserve this second economy, while enabling links to the first. I wrote before about Yehuda Berlinger who had set IP law to verse. In that post, I nudged him to adopt a CC license. He did, but he did so in a very interesting way. As his site now reads:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Attribution should include a live link to this blog post, whenever possible; text link otherwise. License for commercial usage also available from the owner.

This idea is one we're experimenting with at CC -- a NC license that explicitly includes a link to another site to enable commercial licensing. It is one way to preserve the separation of these separate spheres. I'd be eager to hear about other ways you might think better.

But the important point to recognize is that this effort to preserve the separation is fundamentally different from the effort of many in the "free software" or "free content" movement who want all "free" licenses to permit any sort of use, commercial or not. Imho, they are simply ignoring an important reality about the difference between these two economies. Indeed, they're making the opposite mistake that many in the commercial world make: Just as many commercial rights holders believe every single use of creative work ought to be regulated by copyright (see, e.g., the push to force what are plainly "fair uses" of copyrighted work on YouTube to pay the copyright owners), so too these advocates of "free content" would push everyone to treat everything as if it is free of copyright regulation (effectively, if not technically). Second economy sorts believe differently -- that some uses should be free, and others should be with permission.

It is because I have enormous respect for those who make the latter mistake (and believe their motives are more likely pure) that I urge them to consider the radical simplification of social life they insist we push on the world. I like the dynamics of the second economy. Benkler has given it a theory. I think we should be working to support it, not pretending that it is not there.

The obvious reply (and the real puzzle for me) is FLOSS. I said at the start it effectively operated in the second economy. But the "free content" movement that I'm skeptical of is simply trying to push the norms of FLOSS into the content space. How could it then be any different?

In my view, the difference comes from the difference in nature of the stuff. Some cultural production can be collaborative in exactly the way FLOSS is -- Wikipedia. But you need an argument to get from some to all. No doubt, I too need an argument that some is different from some. I don't have that yet. But it is here that I think the really important discussion needs to happen.

Oh, and by the way, Yehuda has added Trademark Law to his verses.

I'm on a flight from Japan to New York for the Anderson event tonight. It is an ANA flight with wifi and ethernet jacks in at least the business/first class seats. There doesn't seem to be any technical blocking (though I can't get FTP to work very well). But interestingly, on the instruction sheet, it says:

ANA kindly requests that passengers refrain from using internet based voice applications and refrain from viewing objectionable material over the internet as it may disturb other passengers.

It is interesting (and refreshing) to see places where the authorities believe norms are a sufficient regulator. It is also interesting (and not surprising) to parse the "request." Only the second restriction is explained -- viewing porn, e.g., would disturb others. Fair enough. But the first restriction is not explained -- until you flip the page to read about the telephone service the airplane offers (at about $10/minute).

(Note, the norm technique may also be what Google is doing on its fantastic new service giving free PDFs of works in the public domain. They too request the work not be used commercially.)