Category Archives: Uncategorized

There’s an interesting discussion of the Google Book Search Project at Open Democracy. Continue reading →

First Monday has a very interesting piece on the “unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science.” Continue reading →

Many thanks to Larry for the platform, and my apologies that I haven’t finished the project of the “ten things that will be free”. It’s an ongoing thought process that I’ll continue on my own blog. I’m going to be giving this talk and changing and adapting it over the next couple of months to refine it into a proper list…. Continue reading →

I’ve been a bit delayed from posting because I’ve been completely swamped by media. As I’ve joked before, I’m a lot like David Hasselhoff: big in Germany. 🙂 But a fair amount of my time was spent this morning trying to complain about a rather absurd story published by Reuters which claims that I’ve announced some major changes to Wikipedia editorial policy. It’s a fine story except for the tiny detail of being completely false. Of course slashdot and a ton of newspapers and websites picked up the story and ran with it, causing a fair amount of speculation based… Continue reading →

Welcome! I will be blogging for Larry Lessig for the next couple of weeks, most of which I will be at the Wikimania conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Wikimania is the first major conference of the Wikimedia Community, and my keynote opening talk on Friday will be entitled “Ten Things That Will Be Free”. The list is inspired by Hilbert’s problems. In 1900, at a conference in Paris, German mathematician David Hilbert presented 10 problems, from a list which ended up being 23. These problems influenced mathematics strongly in the coming years, serving as a focal point for the research and… Continue reading →

Just back from the launch of Creative Commons, Chile, which was in many ways a surprisingly moving few days.

Senator Fernando Flores was the first surprise. Flores was one of the youngest members of the Allende government. He was with Allende on Chile’s September 11th (1973), when Pinochet executed his (American supported) coup. Flores has since had an extraordinary career — prison, exiled to America, time as a scholar studying philosophy and computer science, fantastically successful career in business, exploiting the insights he drew from academics, and now as a Senator (and one time candidate for President). He’s well published and written well about.

I rehearse his career not to compete with Wikipedia, but to set up what was to me most significant about what he said: As he explained to the 400 or so IP-activists assembled at the conference, “Any solution will include America.”

“America.” I admire deeply those who surprise in their perspective. This was a surprise. One might think it very easy for one who had suffered in part because of America never to link “solution” and “America” again. Flores, however, is a wise and careful thinker. In the days after this talk, I got to hear him describe in some depth a conception of progress that depended upon just such wisdom. The right answer in these struggles will include America. It will embrace what is called “IP.” And it was clear to him, if more could acknowledge both, we would make more progress more quickly.

Flores was particularly concerned about how our “movement” would develop. He rightly fears its being captured by any extreme position. Though our allies include the extremes (remember this video from the launch of CC) (and as it is my job to disagree with Mr. Valenti: No, it was not my idea, nor is it my “compact,” but otherwise, exactly right), it is critical that we develop this platform in a way that can include the widest range of creators. All of us have lives independent of CC; some of those lives push political views that would scare others within CC. But it is important that we distinguish these roles, not as a compromise on what is most important, but as a way to emphasize the important fact that those who disagree fundamentally can at least agree about CC.

Flores was particularly concerned that the leaders of CC within Chile might not share this view. And if his fears proved correct, that would have made things very difficult. It was therefore with some concern that I attended the launch of CC in Santiago. But quickly, my concern melted, as the organizers framed the CC launch in terms I’m sure the Senator would have endorsed.

There were of course moments when strong views had the floor. That, I thought, was important to remind everyone that there were important issues at stake. But those views were balanced with an amazing mix of artists — musicians, dancers, film, and DJ — as well as leaders from museums and the academy — all of whom seemed to recognize well the importance of building understanding across a wide range of interests.

This was confirmed at a meeting after the launch. The core group – who had obviously devoted an immense amount of effort in launching CC, and more importantly, in spreading the code and practices they developed to others within Latin America – asked about our direction. I showed them the Barlow-Valenti video. They immediately asked for a copy to help them. they said, explain to others just how they conceived of their own work. The key for them, to borrow a phrase, was rough consensus and running code: consensus on how to proceed, running legal and technical code, to help others build the infrastructure necessary to support a wide range of free culture related projects, of which CC was just one part. And though Senator Flores could not attend this meeting, I trust he would have been reassured by both the commitment of everyone at the table, and the ideal: to get things done.

We at CC launched a small idea; these people have made it something very big. And as is rarely the case, they have launched its with appropriate humility, and a commitment to making it work well, and soon. Chile has become a new favorite. Continue reading →

Larry Lessig has led the charge in showing that the IP law has gone overboard in extending property rights. In lots of contexts, we would do better with mandated licensing fees that give non-owners the option to use and pay a fee. I’ve just published a book called Optional Law: The Structure of Legal Entitlements (University of Chicago Press) that not only formalizes the advantage of optional licenses but also shows there’s a dizzying array of optional entitlement structures that can dominate traditional notions of property. The book suggests a variety of new mechanisms for protecting IP and shows how… Continue reading →

Our proposal for a new statute requiring private warnings and acknowledgements can also be applied at the individual level. Instead of just thinking of the duty to warn as a legislative mandate, we might start thinking of discrimination warnings as a personal moral duty of both the discriminatory organizations and their members. Take for example my church . . …. Continue reading →

In the years after World War I, the United States fell into the Red Scare of 1919-1920. Following upon the Russian Revolution, a series of terrorist bombings in the United States set off a national panic against “radical” elements who were seen as threatening to overthrow the government. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer established the General Intelligence within the Bureau of Investigation and appointed a young J. Edgar Hoover to lead the charge. Hoover unleashed a horde of undercover informants and he and Palmer then launched a series of raids in which thousands of aliens were indiscriminately rounded up and arrested for suspected radical
activities. More than a thousand of these individuals were quickly deported.
By 1921, the nation began to come to its senses and increasingly realized that it had grossly overreacted both during World War I and the Red Scare. In 1922, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone reined in Hoover and warned of the dangers of “secret police.” By 1923, all persons who had been convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 had been released from prison. Thereafter, they were all granted amnesty on the premise that the nation had violated their rights under the First Amendment. From the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, free speech was increasingly celebrated in the United States by the press, educators, civil libertarians, and political leaders as a fundamental American value.
Pressure on this new consensus soon began to build, however, as new radical voices began to be heard during the Depression from both the left (the Communist Party of the United States) and the right (the German-American Bund). By the late 1930s, government investigating committees had begun to look into these new “subversive” organizations.
Then, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Unlike World War I, the enemy had directly attacked the United States. The public rallied to the nation’s its defense. Prior calls for isolationism disappeared after Pearl Harbor, and there was almost no dissent during the “Good War.” (If you’re interested in the dissent that did exist during World War II, and especially the government’s prosecution of “Nazi sympathizers,” see pages 252-280 in Perilous Times.)
The major civil liberties issue in World War II arose out of the internment of 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, representing 90% of all American citizens of Japanese ancestry. It is useful to compare how the United States dealt with individuals of German and Italian ancestry. All German and Italian citizens who were in the United States during World War II (that is, citizens of those nations) were reviewed by the FBI and military authorities. If they were determined to
be dangerous to the national security, they were detained. If they were found not to be dangerous (as was the case for the vast majority), they were allowed to remain in the U.S. under relatively modest restrictions. Of course, no effort was made to round up American citizens of German or Italian origin.
In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, there was no call for the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry. But gradually (false) rumors spread along the West Coast about planned espionage and sabotage, and against a background of long-standing hostility to persons of Asian descent, many citizens became increasingly alarmed and angry about having to live near people who looked like the enemy and might share their aims. When asked why Japanese-Americans should be treated differently from German and Italian Americans, California Attorney General Earl Warren explained that it’s possible to tell a loyal German or Italian from a disloyal one, but that such a determination was simply not possible with those of the Japanese race.
As the clamor for internment grew, it was fed by opportunistic politicians and hysterical newspaper accounts. General DeWitt, who was in charge of the United States’s Western Command, finally recommended that all persons of Japanese ancestry, including American citizens, should leave their homes and be relocated to
concentration camps.
Although J. Edgard Hoover vehemently opposed this recommendation on the ground that it was unnecessary, excessive, and entirely the product of public hysteria, and Attorney General Francis Biddle opposed it as unconstitutional and immoral, FDR nonetheless issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. Under this order, all persons of Japanese ancestry in California, Arizona, Washington and Oregon, men, women, and children, regardless of age, were ordered to abandon their possessions (except those they could carry) and were transported to “internment” camps, where they remained behind barbed wire for almost three years. Why did FDR do this? Certainly, it was not because there was a military necessity. Rather, it was a political decision. FDR did not want to lose the support of the western states in the 1942 congressional elections.
So, here’s a question for you: Suppose the United States is hit with six terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 in the next three weeks. Suppose some of the terrorists are foreigners and some are American citizens who are Muslim. Suppose the Bush administration
orders the detention of all non-citizen Muslims in the United States and the temporary detention of all Muslims who are citizens of the United States, at least to determine which may pose a threat to the security of the nation. Would you support this? Can you distinguish it from the World War II internment? Continue reading →

The six news organizations at the left contracted with two polling organizations at the right to provide exit poll information one week ago today. Those data were inconsistent with the actual results — significantly so. Dick Morris says that “this was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.” The aim of the evil doing in Morris’ judgment was to suppress Bush votes — which it apparently didn’t. But the same data are used by skeptics on the other side, to suggest that those who had a hand in tallying the vote — in particular, one company whose President had promised to deliver Ohio for the President — changed the votes that the exit poll surveyed.
I think both claims are bunk — I don’t think there was a conspiracy to suppress the Bush vote, nor do I think Diebold stole the election for Bush — but there are obvious puzzles that need to be resolved. First, there is Morris’ point — exit polls are just not that wrong. Second, there are the insanely inverted county votes in the many heavily Democratic counties in Florida that had their votes counted by optical scan (and tallied by Diebold machines among others). Why were the polls so bad? Why did Democrats in those counties overwhelmingly defect to the President while remaining “liberal” in their other votes?
These are questions of fact that can be answered, or at least understood, if the facts were known. The Exit Poll Consortium should enable that knowledge. It would be a relatively simple regression to map exit poll data against counties or precincts with suspect machines. More importantly, it would be relatively easy to isolate where, if anywhere, suspicion should be directed.
The Exit Polls have done enough damage to this election. My bet is that it was incompetence at Edison/Mitofsky. But those firms owe it to this Nation to release their data totally, so that a wide range of competent statisticians can evaluate whether and where the problem was.
And more importantly for the blog space: If blogs are going to be something more than the CB radios of journalism, we need an ethic to treat this sort of question ethically. Anyone who is surprised that a voting machine didn’t work has been living on Mars for the last 100 years: Always, and in every election, voting machines fail. That fact should force us to a sensible architecture for voting machines — one which we don’t have just now for electronic voting machines. But it isn’t, itself, evidence this election was “stolen.”
No one can, or should, utter such words without the data to back it up. Instead, we should demand what, in this context, should be our right: to have access to the data. There is irresponsibility somewhere. Let us not add to it here. Continue reading →