In doing some research on The University of the South I happened to run into a link to an interview by our very own Catherine Pellegrino.
Who knew that Catherine was at one time an articles editor for a sci-fi web journal?
Very, very cool. Color me jealous.
Just an example of the fine, fine work our TSA employees are delivering to the American public. This was a someone’s suitcase at RDU which had been searched, then taped back together…evidently there was some difficulty in re-sealing it.
Pictures from the 2004 Betsy College Tour.
So today, Stephen Wolfram put his book A New Kind of Science online, accessible to whomever.
However.
It is in an atrocious format (terrible “one page image at a time” thing). It’s horribly difficult to read in this format, and can’t be taken with you on a device (downloaded to a laptop, thrown on a PDA) with any ease. In addition, the Online Terms of Use would choke a horse. Here are some outtakes:
“The terms, conditions and notices below (“Terms of Use”) govern your use of this Site. Your use of this Site constitutes your agreement to these Terms of Use. If you do not agree with these Terms of Use, please do not use this site. Wolfram reserves the right to change, modify, add, or remove portions of these Terms of Use at any time. It is recommended that you refer to these Terms of Use on a regular basis.”
Gee, thanks Stephen…you’re allowed to change the rules in the middle of the game, if you wish.
“Visitors are encouraged to peruse this Site, but must recognize that its content is protected by international copyright, trademark and other intellectual property laws and may not be mirrored, redistributed, printed, publicly performed or displayed, reproduced in bulk, or archived without advance written permission.”
Then later in the page, you find this:
“Personal use is not restricted. Restrictions apply only to material you wish to present publicly or use commercially.”
Umm….one of these things is not like the other…can I mirror the site for personal use? Can I print it for myself?
I suppose in one sense, it’s nice that this is available electronically at all. But how much nicer is Cory Doctorow’s newest book “Eastern Standard Tribe.” It’s available in no fewer than 15 different formats, downloadable, changeable, and licensed under the Creative Commons License.
This, to me, is the difference between “Open Access” and what I’m calling “Open Information.” One gives you what they want, the others gives you the ability to make what you want. There’s a huge difference in the two.
For a particularly bizarre example, check out Cut’n’Paste”n”Rock’n’Roll a site which takes the text of Cory’s two books (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Eastern Standard Tribe), Alice in Wonderland, and the BBC new feed, and allows you to “mix” them as you might mix music. Very, very cool, and not possible with overtly restrictive IP controls.
So, I am currently sitting in the Jessie Ball duPont Library in Sewanee, TN. Outside is an impenetrable wall of fog left over from the thunderstorms last night, but the interior of the library is silent as a tomb. Handfuls of students, maybe 2 or 3, wander about the stacks, but are absolutely silent.
What a difference from the vibrancy of the UL, or even the frenetic energy of Davis. Small campus, small library…I suppose that’s what you get. The funny thing is, I think I could get used to it. The library feels…manageable. Like maybe you could make a difference. That’s kind of a nice thing to consider when thinking about moving somewhere, isn’t it?
From kuro5hin, one especially venom filled post about bloggers (and MT in particular).
There’s a story on The Chronicle of Higher Education about the current state of P2P sharing on campuses. They spend a lot of time talking about the deal Penn State brokered with Napster 2.0 in order to allow their students to stream music from the service. I have so many problems with this…here’s a quick rundown.
“Under the terms of the deal, students pay nothing to listen to streaming audio of any of the 500,000 songs in the Napster library, or to download the songs to their computers for the duration of their subscriptions to the music service.”
Ummmm….correct me if I’m wrong here, but don’t the students pay the freaking fees that the University used to pay Napster? To claim that “students pay nothing” is just bad journalism. As well, note that they don’t ever own the music…they can stream it, or download it “for the duration” of the deal.
“They must pay 99 cents a song to put music on a compact disk or transfer it to a portable MP3 player. “
So, if they want to actually do anything useful with the music, they have to buy it at the same cost as everyone else. No free ride here.
“Some 17,000 students who have Windows computers at the university’s State College campus were eligible to join the service…”
Windows only…Mac and/or Linux users? No music for you!
And here’s the best part, for those copyright scholars out there…
“University officials worried that a frenzy of downloading activity could cripple the university’s computer network, but Mr. Vaught says the university used packet-shaping and mirror sites, which replicate the content of Napster servers, to control the impact of downloads and keep students who stream music from monopolizing the network.”
“….technology officers had to set up a server that could store a trove of commonly downloaded songs locally in order to keep the campus network from becoming overloaded..”
So, in effect, the University is mirroring the Napster servers, AND is serving the music locally? What in the heck allows this? I mean…I’m sure that there legalities that allow this (licensing via Napster) but I bet that the RIAA would take a hard look at random mirrors of tons of music content on University servers.
Here’s a brief response to a post on the commons-blog from the ALA. Originally left as a comment, but I’m linking via trackback as well to try and generate some conversation.
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One of the things I’m discussing in my Master’s Paper (soon to be openly available near you) is the lack of a “brand identity” to the open access movement. It is similar to the Free Software/Open Source debates between Stallman and Raymond. I think Raymond is very correct in his assertion that language matters, especially when it comes to convincing others of your opinions.
I, for one, really dislike the label “Open Access” since that seems limiting. Every public webpage is technically “Open Access”…I’m more interested in the Open Source idea of the value of the ability to muck around with information of all sorts. Simple access seems almost a trivial right in the increasingly digital era.
Right now I’m leaning towards “Open Information” as a label for the overarching movement. I’d love to hear other suggestions, though.
…the University of Washington in Seattle is going to be offering a class in Google.com via its Information School (formerly the School of Library and Information Science).
Just discovered this guy at Bad News Hughes. His latest post showed up on BoingBoing, but everything on the site is hilarious. The guys has a great writing style…I laughed out loud reading some of his stuff.
Check it out.