For "Against Intellectual Monopoly"

I've written several times about the wonderful online book Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, which argues that we don't need patents and copyrights:

It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is not like ordinary property at all, but constitutes a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not neccesary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.

There's a new version available, with a hard-copy version coming from Cambridge University Press as well. Highly recommended.

Mapping the Fourth Dimension

Good to see that Yahoo is letting OpenStreetMap use its aerial imagery to speed up the process of free map creation.

Of course, we still need to get all those street names and features. GPS traces are by no means dead - think of the new housing estates and areas without imagery. But instead of cycling down every road you should be able to just pass lots of them at either end to get the names. Or just from memory.

Where does this bring us to? Well the ‘big map companies’ use expensive cars and expensive aircraft with expensive cameras and expensive GPS units to create maps. Maybe our GPS units are cheaper and less accurate, but does it matter? I think not. We now have all the pieces of the puzzle and we’re putting out great maps for Free using Free tools.

But I was even more impressed to see that OpenStreetMap has already mapped some of the future too: take a look at the entries here for March 2007.

A Flock of Cormorants

If you're interested, there's a new version of the super-social browser Flock, code-named "Cormorant". Me, I'm waiting for the gannets. (Via Vecosys.)

The BBC's Other Virtual World

You could argue that radio is already a particular kind of virtual world - one created by the wetware between your ears on the basis of the code downloaded by your radio (television clearly isn't a virtual world, because there's little processing or no degrees of freedom involved). But not content with that, the BBC is apparently launching another one:

A virtual world which children can inhabit and interact with is being planned by the BBC.

CBBC, the channel for 7-12 year olds, said it would allow digitally literate children the access to characters and resources they had come to expect.

Users would be able to build an online presence, known as an avatar, then create and share content.

The youth of today....

Voici L'Avenir...

...des idées - gratuit. (Via Lessig.org)

China Mobile: More Users Than the Entire US

Think about it:

There are more mobile phone subscribers at one Chinese operator than people in the entire U.S., according to figures China Mobile posted on its Web site late Friday.

OOo: The Seagull Spreads Its Wings

Good to see that OpenOffice.org project getting more ambitious:

The scope of the ODF Toolkit project is:

1.

To improve the ability to use OpenOffice.org as a programming framework for creating and processing OpenDocument (ODF) documents rather than to use it as a desktop application. This will be achieved by transforming an appropriate subset from the OpenOffice.org source code basis, and by adapting it to the new purpose.

2.

To provide a home for components that can be used for processing ODF documents and that are either based on the new ODF Toolkit, or complement it.

Both together constitutes the ODF Toolkit, which is a toolkit for ODF document creation and processing. This toolkit shares its source code with the OpenOffice.org desktop application where ever this is reasonable. That is, based on the OpenOffice.org source code, there is the OpenOffice.org suite, and an ODF Toolkit, which is tailored to processing ODF documents outside traditional office desktop applications.

(Via Erwin Tenhumberg.)

Microsoft's Eternal Cheek

This is rich:

In this culture of instant information, some Microsoft Corp. researchers are pursuing a radical notion -- the concept of saving messages for delivery in decades, centuries or more.

The project, dubbed "immortal computing," would let people store digital information in physical artifacts and other forms to be preserved and revealed to future generations, and maybe even to future civilizations.

So, the company that more than anyone has tried to lock people into opaque, closed formats that will be unreadable in a few decades, let alone a few millennia, and which even now is trying to foist more of the same on people, suddenly discovers the virtue of unconstrained accessibility.

But to add insult to injury, it then tries to patent the idea. Earth to Microsoft: this is called openness, it's what you've been fighting for the last thirty years. There's a fair amount of prior art for the basic technique, actually.

The Coming Java Tsunami

I think this is just the first of many such decisions, all born of Sun's enlightened choice of the GNU GPL for Java:

Python was originally the language of choice for OLPC [Open Laptop Per Child] but with the announcement of the open sourcing of Java, Blizzard said that the OLPC may move to Java as it is close to native speeds thanks to Java's jit (Just in Time) compiler and Python's interpreter being rather slow. One imagines that with the restricted hardware available that a slow interpreted language is the last thing you want, even if it is an exceedingly easy and powerful one. This is also the first impact I have seen from the open sourcing of Java.

Have Pity on the Orphans

Oh dear, Larry's still having no luck rolling back US copyright law:

In a move that's a blow to the U.S. movement to reform copyright law, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle, in his lawsuit to allow orphaned works into the public domain.

Rejecting the argument of Larry Lessig, the court decided the case was too close to Lessig's Eldred copyright suit of 2002, and that's settled business

Slaiku

When SL is down
We are virtually certain
To find strange beauty

MMORPG in a Box

Raph Koster points out that setting up a MMORPG is pretty cheap these days: even the top-end SmartFox system, which is Java-based, costs just 2000 Euros. Already there's a number of games based on the code. And, of course, all this will run on a GNU/Linux box also costing peanuts. The only downside is that, like many online games these days, the SmartFox approach is to use Flash.

Not Hoping for Misery

This reminds me why I'll never learn Esperanto.

GPL > BT?

As an ex-victim of British Telecom, I have to say that to see it apparently humbled by the forces of light in this way is doubly delicious:

BT's wireless broadband router Home Hub may be in breach of the terms of Linux's General Public License, after it emerged the device runs on open source code.

...

BT responded quickly and posted an admission that it was using open source software and made it available to download late last week. However, investigation by the Freedom Taskforce, the part of Free Software Europe which deals with licensing, said BT had not in fact published the complete code.

The saga is clearly not over yet, but what's significant is that a very large multinational like BT would at least want to look like it's complying: that's power. And if you don't believe that there's something new in the air, here's exhibit number 2.

Can ICANN Open Up?

I've been fairly hard on ICANN on this blog - hard but fair, given it's pretty appalling track record in terms of openness. But lo! two glimmers of light on the horizon. ICANN has suddenly got intelligent, and appointed the fine UK hack Kieren McCarthy as General Manager, Public Participation (sounds so grand). It also seems to have sprouted a blog. Here's hoping.

Will the Pleiades Be an Open (Content) Cluster?

According to Wikipedia:

The Pleiades (also known as M45 or the Seven Sisters) is the name of an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus. It is among the nearest to the Earth of all open clusters, probably the best known and certainly the most striking to the naked eye.

So let's hope the this exciting new Pleiades is also fully open:

Built atop the open-source Plone Content Management System and hosted by the Stoa Consortium, Pleiades will provide on-line access to all information about Greek and Roman geography assembled by the Classical Atlas Project for the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (R. Talbert, ed., Princeton, 2000. Pleiades will also enable large-scale collaboration in order to maintain and diversify this dataset. Combining open-content approaches (like those used by Wikipedia) with academic-style editorial review, Pleiades will enable anyone — from university professors to casual students of antiquity — to suggest updates to geographic names, descriptive essays, bibliographic references and geographic coordinates. Once vetted for accuracy and pertinence, these suggestions will become a permanent, author-attributed part of future AWMC publications and data services.

(Via Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog.)

Open Source Bacteria

Another reason to understand openness:

When a team of geneticists unlocked the secret of the bug's rapid evolution in 2005, they found that one strain of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii carries the largest collection of genetic upgrades ever discovered in a single organism. Out of its 52 genes dedicated to defeating antibiotics, radiation, and other weapons of mass bacterial destruction, nearly all have been bootlegged from other bad bugs like Salmonella, Pseudomonas, and Escherichia coli.

In the open source world of bacteria, everyone is working for the resistance.

Linden Lab: Yes, They Really Get It

Further to this post, here's conclusive proof that the people behind Second Life get it:

Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody. Indeed, any competent attorney is well aware that the outcome of sending a cease-and-desist letter regarding a parody is only to draw more attention to such parody, and to invite public scorn and ridicule of the humor-impaired legal counsel. Linden Lab is well-known for having strict hiring standards, including a requirement for having a sense of humor, from which our lawyers receive no exception.

In conclusion, your invitation to submit a cease-and-desist letter is hereby rejected.

CrowdSpirit

Crowdsourcing in the French Alps:

Our business model is simply to design innovative electronic products by “you” for “you” and to reward the best “you” based on the products sales revenues& in practice “you” will be made by a community. CrowdSpirit will provide the means for this community to design, invest, produce, market, distribute and support the products that make business sense. To conclude, the community will assist and participate in every step of the product cycle and will earn money from these products based on each person’s contribution.

Dunno if it works, though.

Acoustic Ecology and the Commons of Silence

Some interesting information about the Acoustic Ecology Institute:

a New Mexico-based non-profit working to "increase personal and social awareness of our sound environment, through education programs in schools, regional events, and our internationally recognized website," and to build "a comprehensive [online] clearinghouse for information on sound-related environmental issues and scientific research."

Am I Dreaming?

Dreaming in Code: a book about Chandler.

Chandler? Out of several hundred thousands pieces of free software he choose Chandler??? A project that after nearly four years still has not yet got to a 1.0 release? A project that, though started with the best intentions (which I applaud) is essentially irrelevant now that we have Lightning, based on a program (Thunderbird) that is already widely used?

Great title: pity about the subject-matter.

The (Other) Foundation

As a big fan of Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, I was delighted to learn that the Linux people have done their psychohistorical calculations, and realised they need to create one themeselves.

Why Don't You Get a Life?

This is good.

This is better.

Hrant Dink's Memorial

Surprisingly, there is tiny consolation to be found in the murder of Hrant Dink, the Turkish Armenian shot dead outside his newspaper's office last week.

The killer presumably hoped to silence Dink from speaking his wise, calm words about the genocide of over a million Armenians at the hands of the Young Turks in 1915, and of the need for reconciliation, not recrimination.

And yet Dink's death has probably done more to highlight that genocide than any of his words. A casual search for "armenian genocide" on Google News turns up well over a thousand hits over the last few days. At least in the age of the Internet, the truth about such things, once exposed, is not so easily hidden.

This is Dink's memorial.

Citizendium Unforks

Citizendium is a wonderful test of many things, and it just became even more interesting because it has decided to unfork itself from Wikipedia:

After considerable deliberation, indicating broad support, we have decided to delete all inactive Wikipedia articles from the Citizendium pilot project wiki. This will leave us with only those articles that we’ve been working on. The deletion will take place on Saturday at noon, Eastern time.

This is an experiment. In other words, we’re quite seriously thinking of not forking Wikipedia after all. If we see more activity on the wiki, which is what I expect, then the Wikipedia articles will stay deleted.

(Via Open Access News.)