Category: Digital Culture

Story from the Daily Yomiuri.

So…I’m trying to figure out how Wired managed to interview Paul for a feature, take pictures of campus, and no one decided to tell me about it? We even get pictures of some classmates in the story. Great publicity for Ibiblio, and here’s hoping it ends up in the print version (not likely, but would be excellent). Very cool stuff…congratulations, all you wacky Ibiblio guys….and great publicity for librarians as well (The title of the piece is “Freedom Fightin’ Librarians…Where sharing isn’t a dirty word”…you GO wired).

…I consider myself very familiar with the concerns put forth by Larry Lessig et al, as well as the Creative Commons and other sites attempting to create an Open Source/Open Culture vibe in the US. But what I can’t find is a site that discusses the general issues…what is it, specifically, that is the problem? How do Open Source software licenses and things like the GPL overlap with Lessig/Eldred and their issues with copyright? It isn’t actually very straighforward at all…which is one reason I’m trying to formulate this for my Master’s Paper. There’s a net of sites that all talk about the issues without really describing them in any concise way (the EFF, Eldred, and the ones previously mentioned).

So…does anyone out there in blog land know of a good “summary of issues” site for this stuff? Or is that what I should be doing? Because I really think it’s needed…..

Today was a good day for techie software….Go and check out MozCC, all you Creative Commons loving, Mozilla using types. It’s a plugin for Moz that reads the CC RDF info off of a webpage and gives you a synopsis of the chosen license. Pretty nifty.

…take a look at MyTunes.

…for those friendster addicts that just need a new fix:

Huminity

which looks a little like friendster on crack, complete with animated social network map (check the animated demo).

I am shamelessly ripping them off, but JEEEZ this is a bunch o’ cool links…

Segway based robot
Mayberry gets Wi-Fi
last, but certainly not least…sushi served on naked women.

The last one is just a gratuitous attempt at getting my site listed in Google for “sushi” and “naked.”

…while surfing for porn.

Terrible reporting from Reuters via Yahoo News concerning a deal Penn State struck with Napster. The article screams “Penn State University on Thursday reached a deal to offer thousands of students free access to the Napster music service” but then goes on to say “Students can also buy permanent downloads that can be burned to CDs or transferred to portable devices for 99 cents each…”

So…it sounds like they’ve just agreed to pay Napster to let students stream music. STREAM MUSIC. Something that they can almost certainly do from any number of websites currently. Streaming music isn’t hard to find….hell, if all students want to do is stream, they’d be better off with iTunes streaming from each others computers. That’s free…

Sometimes, I really think there’s a significant disconnect between people who get digital music, and people who don’t. And people who don’t shouldn’t be agreeing to pay money to other people who don’t….people want to own the music. They want to use it with their portable music players. And they want to burn it to CD if they wish.

UPDATE:
Story on Wired News also about Penn State deal, where it is claimed that the service “includes unlimited streaming and tethered downloads, 40 radio stations and an online magazine and message boards.” Now what the hell is a “tethered download? I’m assuming (since again, we’re short on technical details) that it’s a download that’s DRM’d to your computer. I’m also assuming that it will have “can not burn to CD” DRM attached.

One further assumption: It will take about 3.5 minutes for someone to crack this DRM. Updates as they occur.

Evidently, there is a new underground sport brewing in the cities around the world….Le Parkour. Started by a guy named David Belle…more or less, it looks like the art of being as close to Spiderman as possible. There’s an official website, which has a video page. I recommend checking out the USA Parkour video for an example of the sorts of things that they do. Imagine….rock climbing, combined with martial arts, with a side of urban exploration. Very odd, but completely cool to watch. Ignore the French rap music in the background.