Source: From the Q&A period of a speech by Noam Chomsky at Washington State University on April 22, 2005 Questioner: “IP” or Intellectual Properties. Do you feel that they are an integral component to personal freedoms or a detriment? And what place does Intellectual Property have in public and academic settings? Chomsky: That’s a very… Continue reading
Date archives "December 2011"
Mozilla releases Learning, Freedom & the Web (e)book
Source: Timothy Vollmer – CC Anya Kamenetz and Mozilla have released a great book called Learning, Freedom & the Web. It details many of the activities and ideas generated at Mozilla’s eponymous festival held last year, “a 500 person meta-hackfest that took place in a Barcelona city square,” says Ben Moskowitz from Mozilla. The book… Continue reading
#euhackathon ChokePoint Project release
Source: ChokePoint Project Finally, a release! Above is a screenshot of our first, very beta release of euhackathon.chokepointproject.net It was put together for the 1st EUhackathon held in Brussels on November 8th & 9th 2011. It’s a prototype, a proof of concept. Here’s the ‘About’ from the release site: What we did: We built… Continue reading
Occupy Demographics and Political Participation Survey
Source: OccupyResearch Survey Team Quick links Take the survey online: http://svy.mk/owsurvey-net. Download the survey guide: http://bit.ly/OccupyResearchSurveyandGuide. Background: The OccupyResearch network is pleased to launch this exciting survey, which aims to create a better understanding of who engages with the Occupy movement, and how — it includes questions about media, communication, political activities, and more. The… Continue reading
Former Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito on the battles faced by CC licensing
Source: Katie Scott – Wired This article forms part of Wired.co.uk’s Creative Commons Week, which sees a range of articles published on the topics of CC licensing, as well as the past, present and future of the Creative Commons movement. Creative Commons is like a social network, claims Joi Ito, the organisation’s former CEO and… Continue reading
GPL, copyleft use declining faster than ever
Source: Brian Proffitt – ITWorld A new analysis of licensing data shows that not only is use of the GPL and other copyleft licenses continuing to decline, but the rate of disuse is actually accelerating. That was the conclusion of Matthew Aslett’s analysis of recent data from Black Duck Software, which shows that while use of… Continue reading
Why SOPA is unconstitutional
Source: Cory Doctorow – BoingBoing The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Corynne McSherry looks at the revised version of the Stop Online Piracy Act that is going to markup today, and finds that it does not address the substantive First Amendment issues raised by scholars who’ve weighed in since its introduction. First, both bills would still result… Continue reading
Open Source Ecology: Can open source save the planet?
Source: Rohan Pearce (Techworld Australia) Ambitious open source projects are nothing new. After all, the free software movement started with the GNU project — the creation of free tools to build a free operating system — which at one point many would have considered an impossible dream. However, the participants in the Open Source Ecology… Continue reading
TIME names “The Protester” 2011 Person of the Year
Source: Xeni Jardin – BoingBoing In TIME magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year issue, this cover by artist Shepard Fairey, portraits of more than 50 protestors from around the world, and an essay by Kurt Andersen: Massive and effective street protest’ was a global oxymoron until-suddenly, shockingly-starting exactly a year ago, it became the defining… Continue reading
Clive Thompson on the Future of Printed Books
Source: Clive Thompson – Wired Illustration: David Schwen Will the ebook kill off the print book?” Every time I hear that question, I think about the “paperless office.” Back in the ’80s, the rise of word processors and e-mail convinced a lot of people that paper would vanish. Why print anything when you could simply… Continue reading
Final Draft of Brazilian Copyright Reform Bill Leaked by Forum Magazine
Source: Pedro Mizukami Renato Rovai, editor of Brazil’s Fórum magazine, has just posted the final draft of the Brazilian copyright reform bill on his blog. This and previous versions of the draft bill have circulated from hand to hand in the past few weeks, reaching a few members of civil society and journalists, but not… Continue reading
#Goteo: Validating an irrigation system for the commons
This post from Goteo describes the state and successes of the project so far: Photo source: Botanicalls Kits, based on arduino let plants reach out for human help! They offer a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates to your mobile phone We’ll start this post citing one of the best shared… Continue reading
Creative Commons Version 4.0 – Public Discussion Launched
Source: Diane Peters – CC site We are pleased to announce the beginning of the public discussion process that we expect to result in version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite. Timeliness and Opportunity The 4.0 discussions held at the 2011 Global Summit confirmed for CC the need to commence the 4.0 discussion process… Continue reading
EU to Give Secret Anti-censorship Software to Human Rights Activists
Source: Jennifer Baker, IDG News The European Union plans to distribute new software to help human rights activists and dissidents in authoritarian regimes circumvent censorship. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes announced the “No Disconnect Strategy” on Monday to provide support to Internet users, bloggers and cyberactivists living in countries with poor track records on human… Continue reading
Legal Scholars Release Critical Analysis of U.S. Proposals for Intellectual Property and Pharmaceutical Chapters of the Trans Pacific Partnership
Source: InfoJustice.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 6, 2011 CONTACTS Sean Flynn: 202-294-5749 | [email protected] Brook Baker: 617-259-0760 | [email protected] Margot Kaminski: [email protected] As trade officials from nine countries meet in Malaysia for the tenth round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement negotiations, a report released today by legal scholars analyses the U.S. proposals for chapters on intellectual… Continue reading
UNESCO Introduces Global Open Access Portal
Source: Mike Palmedo The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently announced the creation of a portal that “presents a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world. For countries that have been more successful implementing Open Access, the portal highlights critical success factors and aspects of… Continue reading