Velo, Rapido: This is about a few different things.

Tagged politics

Free as in Google

I haven't been following the Google Books lawsuit and settlement proposal too closely because I don't often think of myself as a book author. Not in the sense that Google Books or the settlement will impact my livelihood. It hadn't actually occurred to me that the settlement might impact my freedom. But a press release from the Software Freedom Law Center caught my eye: Today SFLC filed a letter with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York objecting to the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement. In the letter, filed on behalf of the FSF and author Karl Fogel, SFLC asks the court to consider the impact of the settlement upon members of the class who have distributed their works under Free licenses. I'm embarrassed to confess I had been thinking that this lawsuit (You are of course familiar with the lawsuit. Right?) was more academic than all that. I was thinking about what it means that Yahoo, Amazon and Google get to go sit in a darkened room somewhere (an expansive board room with a fine catered lunch, more likely) and rewrite copyright law all by themselves. I wasn't thinking about freedom.

View Free as in Google

A World of Opportunities

I've been kicking around the right way to announce a thing I announced to my colleagues a week ago. That thing being that I'm leaving Gotham Gazette. The reasons are both simple and complex, but the simplest is that the publication really, really needs someone to evaluate web analytics tools not someone to tackle the big, fun, challenging question of why New Yorkers aren't more interested in public policy. Well, I think they do need the latter, but fundamental scarcity of resources means that the former is winning out. These are good questions, though. The civic engagement ones, I mean. Is it because we think policy is impenetrable and our legislators are all bought? Is it because we don't notice that land use decisions matter until developers are breaking ground on a sky rise across the street? That we think the game is won already? I'm not sure, but I think changing the way people think about local policy is a really interesting part of our project here.

View A World of Opportunities

Thou Shalt Not Charge Thy Massage

Via consumerist, I landed on this list of things you should never charge from Marketplace. I keep thinking that I'm going to post something about how we're using Wesabe and what I'm learning from looking at where our money goes. A note about Wesabe: I like it ...

View Thou Shalt Not Charge Thy Massage

This isn’t (Updated)

I had bad information folks, and I apologize for that. I have been following the investigation into Brad's murder just closely enough that I was pretty shocked to learn that the local activist who the authorities are trying to pin the murder on had already been tried, found guilty and ...

View This isn’t (Updated)

Pirates and Steamfitters

Eventually: my promised report back on the Pirate Bay talk, which was great, and after which Mister Mux Tape explained that commercial software is, by its very nature, better than free and open source software and then asked me if I worked for the FSF when I called him on that bizarre and baseless assertion. I'm not even talking about Apache here. Or I am, but at the present moment, Open Office is better documented than the MS Office suite. And calc's financial functions are just plain better. I didn't point out that I don't think that the Free Software Foundation really has the staff resources to travel the Eastern seaboard heckling speakers at community arts talks. I also didn't point out that there are people in this world (no really, there are!) who hold opinions they aren't paid to hold and expertise on subjects they are not professional lobbyists on behalf of. Actually, I could kind of wrap that one up and repeat what we already know which is that the Bureau of Piracy is great, you should take a look at the links on the original post and (this is the part I hope you already know) that the real problem with the prosecution of the buccaneers is about free speech. Not about my right to swap music willy-nilly, copyright be damned (another thing I didn't say to Mux Man: there is, I think, a big difference between software and music) but about whether a file sharing platform should be held accountable for the files shared over it. Particularly in a world where some musicians do want to make large files (their own) available free of charge and politically significant data sets can be a difficult thing to host on your own little server. Fundamentally, neither the laws nor the recording industry have kept up with the modern world and it is worth asking why that is really the fault of the Pirate Bureau. That was rough. I might come back and try to make it sound a little coherent.

View Pirates and Steamfitters

Two Things I Didn’t Know

In a story about a kid caught up in a sentencing scandal (judges taking kick-backs from private juvenile detention facility operators was never on my list of reasons private jails are wrong) I learned that parents pay some part ($110 bi-weekly, in this case) of the cost of ...

View Two Things I Didn’t Know

Of Presidents and Pirates

I got it wrong, they weren't Indonesian, they were Nepalese Ghurkas. But a thing I know that you might not, about merchant ships and pirates, which is that there are pirates everywhere. Or at least that there are all kinds of known pirate waters and the coast of Somalia is one such known pirate water. So if you don't know, now you know. There's pirates in them thar seas, and ships full of wheat and sugar hire Nepalese Ghurka guards to pretect them from same. Go read the kid brother's really-not-a-blog. Search for "pirate" -- his not-a-blog doesn't do permalinks. Fun other fact: if you're a merchant seaman, you can vote by fax.

View Of Presidents and Pirates

NYPD to Amanda: Drop Dead

Got a ticket this morning, and had to stand on a traffic island with Brooklyn Bridge-bound cars whizzing by while I waited for Officer Illegible to write me up. Apparently, you aren't actually allowed to ride a bike from the bike lane on the street to the bike lane on the bridge. Because you have to enter the crosswalk to do so. You're supposed to wait until all the cars coming up Tillary get a green turn signal, and then cross their path to get to the bridge.

View NYPD to Amanda: Drop Dead

Art! (You should come)

ABC NO RIO GALA & BENEFIT AUCTION WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 7 TO 10 PM ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS 172 NORFOLK STREET Hungry March Band will be performing along with Aurora Boob Realis, Boobie von Trapp and Jezebel Express, all MC'd by the most excellent Reverend Jen. ABC No Rio has an ...

View Art! (You should come)

Cracker, Go Home

Last night, we went with a bunch of Merry's apprentices to see Danny Hoch's new show in a high school auditorium in Bushwick. An auditorium decorated with murals that tell the story of the mankind on earth, in which very fair skinned naked people are blessed by a winged angel ("The Dawn of Civilization") and then bestowed the flame ("The Gift of Fire"). And with fire the story ends. Before I start, just so you know, I'm struggling with the fact that last year's RAT was really inspiring and rejuvenating for me but without something to offer I can't see myself going again. So I saw a play finally. Some live theater. Saw it with a couple of teenagers (both named Hector) whose entire previous experience with live theater consisted of a trip to Lincoln Center to see the Nutcracker (shorter Hector) and "we saw this play once at school" (larger Hector).

View Cracker, Go Home

FolioGrid - a Premium Wordpress Theme by FrogsThemes.com

Menu

Categories

Archives

Search