I was intrigued by Governor Palin’s hint in her ABC interview that her experience was comparable to other VPs across history. I was surprised by how incorrect she was.
Here’s a mp4 version.
Here’s the version at blip.tv.
Here’s a version at the Internet Archives.
The ever-fantastic Sunlight Foundation has a launched a Public Markup of the Financial Industry Bailout Bill. Check it out here.
Mark Dery has a nice piece in PRINT magazine against the Orphan Works Bill.
Susan Crawford’s fantastic idea — One Web Day — happened today. I participated in New York. My five minutes is in the extended entry. PDF is here.
This Technology, This Community, This Dream: One Web Day, 2008
Lawrence LessigI am honored to be here to mark, to celebrate, this One Web Day, as it is all together fitting to, like the Earth, celebrate the Web with its own special day.
There is an endless list of technologies with us today that forty years ago only science fiction writers, and professors at MIT, could have imagined imagined. But on that list, there’s only one that we could imagine celebrating with a day. There won’t be a one iPod day, Steve’s dreams notwithstanding. Nor a one PC day, whether or not Seinfeld offers to come. Only this technology — the Web; only this community — the Web; only this dream — the Web; makes sense to celebrate in just this way.
And of course, there is much to be proud of. This technology, this community, this dream, is far more than anyone who created it ever imagined. As Holmes said of the constitution — that it “called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters” — so too could we say of the Net.
Indeed, that is precisely what we cheerleaders have said of the Net, as we have fought to defend it from changes that would corrupt its most precious feature — that it repeatedly surprises even the most gifted of its begetters. Defend it, that is, by keeping it open to change, free from the inevitable design of those who have made it to make it so the platform on which they have made it doesn’t encourage others to displace them.
But as I reflect upon where we are today — and by “we” I mean we Americans, just one part of this world — I grow increasingly impatient with celebrations. I grow tired of self-confident pride.
We are in the middle of a war, paralyzed by terror. In this city, the financial system of our nation is collapsing. Across our nation, the financial system of millions of families has already collapsed.
And yet at the center of this mess is a government — the product of a democracy — which too few of us respect. A president favorably thought of by less that a third of the Nation. A Congress favorably thought of by less than 10%. The only branch enjoying majority support is the one branch not elected by the people — the Court.
We should pause to think about just what this means. There were more who supported the British Crown at the revolution than support the US Congress today. And I suspect more who had faith in our government attending to the problems that were ours at every point in America’s history, save that one point that quickly slid to a civil war.
We must change this. It is time we turn this extraordinary platform for hope, the Web, to more of the extraordinary public problems that weigh us down today. It is time we use the inspiration and power of this technology, this community, this dream, to fix what is broken in this real world. It is time the virtual gets used to fix the real.
Our crisis in governance has perhaps never been as profound. And it feels almost Hollywood-esque, or Harry Potter-esque, that just at the moment when things are as dark as they could possibly be, we get handed a magical tool that could, if used well, save this day.
But the fact is things are this dark, and we have been given that tool. And we must use it to learn again how citizens govern.
There is a government we are responsible for. There are enormous problems that it has either caused, or is not curing. Let us take this technology, this community, this dream, and use it to restore democratic responsibility. And community. And a dream.
Trust: Reaching The 100 Million Missing Voters, originally released in 2004 as a collection of essays, has been re-released online under a CC BY-NC license, by (my friend) the author, Farai Chideya, is credited and it is for non-commercial purposes.
You can download the first chapters here, with more to follow as the election continues.
Russ Gooberman wrote to tell a happy story about Major League Baseball.
A month ago, I created a mashup clip of some MLB’s All-Star Game Home Run Derby. Specifically, I wanted to feature the record-breaking home run streak of Texas Rangers youngster, Josh Hamilton. So, I cut up some YouTube footage of his longest homerun of the contest, and set it to the audio of the final homerun sequence of the movie, The Natural. The next day, the mashup was featured on SportsIllustrated.com as their “Video of the Day.” Here’s My Mashup.
The following day, MLB Advanced Media sent a trademark claim to YouTube, and had the video taken down. I was sent this notice from YouTube:
“This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by MLB Advanced Media claiming that this material is infringing:”
Using the YouTube notification process, I sent a counter-notification to MLB Advanced Media, which read as follows:
“Under established Fair Use principles, if a work is considered transformative, it does not represent an infringement. This video in particular, is extremely transformative. First of all, it takes less than a minute of footage out of an over three hour exhibition. Secondly, the footage is edited differently than the original telecast. Thirdly, the entire soundtrack has been removed and replaced. Fourthly, the footage itself has been altered, added to, subtracted from, and has had the meaning changed altogether.
The work shows ONE of over thirty home runs Mr. Hamilton hit in the contest. Clearly, this cannot be any kind of substitution for the actual footage of the event. It is provided as symbolic footage to give historical context. As such, it specifically helps the interests of Major League Baseball in publicizing the significence of this event.
The purpose of this transformative piece was to provide commentary on the event itself, and to compare the event to a historically important moment in baseball history. This quality of providing commentary to further public discourse, is another specific component of Fair Use doctrine, that allows for the use of copyrighted material.
This piece is fully non-commercial. The website behind the creation of this piece takes in zero revenue, and is a free entertainment service. Non-commercial use is another standard by which copyrighted material is allowable for re-use.
The historical recording and capturing of Hamilton’s Derby performance belongs to Major League Baseball. The event, in itself, does not. The interpretation of such an event in the public discourse is not for Major League Baseball to determine or influence. These events that affect our perceptions of our national pastime cannot be copyrighted. The discussion and dissemination of ideas relating to them cannot be censored.
There are countless cases of MLB pursuing copyright infringements that go beyond their rights as copyright holders. Evidence of overzealous prosecution has been abundant. This Sisyphean struggle to stop any and all interpretations of MLB material will eventually fail.
In the past, Major League Baseball has been a pioneering force in American progressive social movements (see Jackie Robinson’ s breaking of the color barrier, or Curt Flood’s resistance changing the face of American labor movements). It is a shame that Major League Baseball has chosen to drag its feet and has failed to encourage a more open dissemination of information in this matter.”
Within one day, not only had MLB Advanced Media relinquished its claim on the video, but had gone out of its way to feature the mashup on the official MLB entertainment blog.
So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you take the time to use the proper channels, and let the giant media conglomerates know you’re willing to put up a fight, they may decide that you’re not worth their time. Hopefully we can use these tactics to forward the cause of fair use and creative commons-owned properties.
Happy news indeed.
So here’s an embarrassing confession: I’m a member of the Clear program. If you fly a lot, you will have seen a growing number of airports with this beautiful blue cube at a security check point. If you’re not paying attention, you might not understand what they are. These are premium security check points, meaning you pay Clear a fee, hand over some biometric data, and they give you a Clear card. Then you get to use the Clear card to pass through this special security line. (Weirdly, you still need to produce a photo ID, but never mind).
Why would anyone ever do this?
I find the worst part of travel is the uncertainty caused by variable events — the need to bury 60 minutes to be sure that you can get through security when 80% of the time it would only take 20 minutes. For people like Joi Ito (and to a lesser extent, me, meaning people who travel way too much), that adds a huge amount of wasted time to the travel schedule.
The great advantage to Clear is that you are 95% certain that security will take no more than 10 minutes. Usually it is much much less. Meaning you can shave tons of time off of time at the airport, meaning you can add lots of time to time at home (for me, with my kids).
For some of you, the advantage may well be worth the cost. And if it is (and here’s the real reason I’m advertising this here), you could lower the cost to me if you use this referral code — [removed — see comments] — when you sign up here. That code, in other words, gets me a month free.
Scandalous, I know, me pushing this privacy-reducing technology, though beyond the biometric data, I’m not sure what additional data I’m actually providing to the world beyond what is already there, and I’m not a deep skeptic of biometrics. But there’s no requirement you use it (you’re free, of course, to go through the standard line if you want to), and there’s lots of promises about how the data won’t be used (though of course, in a world of immunity granted to corporations cooperating with the government, no one should trust those promises). But here’s how I calculate it for me: I flew about 50 times last year. If this reliably saves me 30 minutes each flight, that’s 25 hours saved. At minimum wage, that just about pays for the privilege. And at the value I place on time with my kids, it pays for itself many many times over.
Some Stanford alumni have started a travel project for Obama, TraveforChange.org. The basic idea — use frequent flyer miles to help Obama volunteers get to places where they can do some good.
Whistle-Safe.org is a site designed to lower to cost of whistleblowers coming forward, by offering to protect their anonymity. In this climate of a scandal a day, useful progress.
From Politico:
Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry.
