Brilliant Tim O’Reilly essay

Piracy is progressive taxation.

  • For most authors, their enemy is obscurity, not piracy. Piracy benefits the little guy and is an irritant to the big guys
  • For publishers, piracy is a manageable cost of doing business, like shoplifting. It doesn’t kill the business — Microsoft is profitable despite warez newsgroups
  • Customers will pay for good digital distribution; O’Reilly’s Safari is an example
  • In the world of digital distribution there will still be a role for publishers and distributors. For reasons of math and marketing, intermediaries will emerge to bridge the gap between millions of buyers and millions of sellers

And more great stuff.

18th century letters

Mitch Ratcliffe writes that weblogs are like 18th century letters, a social form in which the literate class wrote to each other expecting to be circulated and published.
Mitch’s perspective on this feels right to me. Some people use weblogs as diaries. I use the weblog to publish letters. Most blog entries here, including the book reviews and news commentary, were things that I was already writing and sending to one or two friends by email. The blog lets me share those thoughts with more people without committing spam.

Public domain considered creative junkyard

Writing about the copyright dinner, Chip Rosenthal says:
During the discussion of public domain, a metaphor occurred to me that I kind of like. I suggested that the public domain is becoming considered a creative junkyard, where we cast off stuff when it is no longer of value. That, of course, is not the purpose of the public domain. It would be good if we can turn this perception around, so that people can understand the value of having material in the public domain. Otherwise, where will Disney get the ideas to steal for their great movies?

EFF-Austin copyright dinner last night.

The copyright dinner last night went well. We had a good turnout – 10 people to talk about copyright issues.
It was a smart, knowledgable crowd with diverse interests — code, art, law. We had an interesting conversation about problems with current copyright policy, and ways that we can fight bad laws and change people’s understandings about culture as property. The discussion was more collaborative and less debate-ful than previous, more free-form EFF- meetings, for better and worse…
At the end of the meeting we brainstormed about ways to get the word out to legislators, press, and the community, and have folks on point on point to do homework and co-ordinate action.
The next session will have Beth Macknik leading a discussion on on databases, privacy/surveillance. I’m really looking forward to the next session. The Total Information Act has me really worried. Beth has a lot of great background knowledge on the issues, and excellent ideas about approaches.

The web is where writing becomes reading

Greg Elin, who really needs a weblog whose brand new weblog is here, from a mailing list
Most of the efforts of “electronic publishing” have been about how to make READING a better experience. But the READING experience is actually very well solved by linear text (e.g., books, articles, etc.) So the big money went into systems for more varied DISTRIBUTION of information already being written. And those systems failed.
But personal web sites were an instant hit — people paid money to have them. And now Weblogs appear to be here to stay. And Weblogs make it easier to WRITE. (They are also easy to read, but in large part because they are easy to WRITE.) The tools that have made money on the Internet/Web are tools that have improved the WRITING, the authorship, experience. (And the large media giants have only tried mostly to develop tools for the MANAGEMENT of written information, that is PUBLISHING WORKFLOWS.

Ed’s mobile office rating guide

from Ed Vielmetti’s Vacuum email list
In thinking about how to find places to carry on my daily work, I started composing a rating guide for the mobile office location for the
telecommuter. This involves the key technologies of
– wireless Internet on your laptop
0 stars: no signal
1/4 star: pay-per-use rental computers
1/2 star: pay-per-use wireless; free computers
1 star: free wireless with strong signal
– a mobile phone, and a place to talk on it
0 stars: no signal
1/4 star: signal, but no place to talk – too noisy or too quiet
1/2 star: signal, a place to talk, but no door to keep private
1 star: signal and a door to shut, or a wireline phone and same
– Kinko’s services (print, photocopy, office supply)
0 stars: nothing, and nothing nearby
1/4 star: you know where to go to, but it’s inconvinent
1/2 star: within walking distance, or local but incomplete
1 star: more copy, fax, print tools than you know how to use
– coffee, tea, or other convivial snacks
0 stars: you go hungry
1/4 star: institutional burnt black coffee
1/2 star: your own kitchen, or a place to snack sans atmosphere
1 star: a place to hang out with comfy couches and people around
– power outlets
0 stars: none to be found
1/4 star: only for the floor polishing machines
1/2 star: at some places to sit, but not many, or not enough
1 star: one seat, one power outlet
– books
0 stars: only the ones you carry on your back
1/4 star: a smattering of resume how-tos and business best sellers
1/2 star: a store or library or good personal collection
1 star: a major research library or exceptional special collection
No one organization that I know of offers all of these in one place. E.g.
The library. Our library is working on mobile wireless, and has lots of public use computers (1/2 *), but there are very few places you can engage in phone calls without bothering someone (0 *). There are copiers but no office supplies (1/2 *), no food and beverages allowed (0 *), but plenty of power (1 *) and more reference and popular books than you’d ever be able to read (1 *). Total rating: 3 of 6.
Kinko’s. These vary more widely than I’d like, and no particular store is guaranteed to have them all. Generally there’s at least a for-pay computer but sometimes you can get full internet via the printer stations (1/4 – 1 *). Your co-workers will notice if you’re on the phone (1/2 *), but there are office supplies and copiers galore (1 *). The beverage selection is almost always utilitarian and office-spartan (1/4 *). Power is readily available (1 *) but the only books you will find are
motivational and self-help (1/4 *). Total: 3-4 of 6.
Your favorite coffee shop. My favorite is Cafe Ambrosia, which has no Internet at the moment (0 *) but makes up for it by having power outletsat every table (1 *). Phone calls are expected (1 *), there’s good coffee and even comfy couches to sit on (1 *). It’s within a short walk of a Kinko’s (1/2 *) and Borders #1 (1/2 *) so the lack of books and copiers on site are easily made up for in a pinch. Total: 4 of 6.
My home office. Good internet (1 *), decent power though I need another power strip (1/2 *). Exceptionally good place to make or take phone calls (1 *). The kitchen is downstairs, but it’s self-service, and convivial is not really the way to describe the office — there’s no way you could have a four person meeting here (1/2 *). Getting copies made is a pain (1/4 * – could be improved with investment). As for books, there are lots of books here, but not always the specialized reference or brand new books that I can get downtown; give 1/2 * for the library, and another 1/4 * for the #5 bus that takes 10 minutes to get downtown where the books live. Total: 4 of 6, with notes for improvement that would add 1 more star almost all the way to 6 except for “convivial”.

Blog chat doesn’t work yet

None of the blog chat/ IM tools I’ve tried has worked so far — need to take the Yahoo button down at left because it doesn’t work.
The blogchat beta technically worked, but it took a multi-step process. Not only did you need to open a browser with your blog up, you needed to go to their site and log in with a password. Also, the sound notification feature requires flash, and I don’t have flash working in Mozilla. So you need to be looking at the window to see if someone is trying to talk to you. I’m never staring at a chat window, waiting for someone to talk to me! When I had it turned on, I missed people, and most of the time I never got around to turning it on during the day.
The Yahoo IM is easier. When your blog window is up and you’re live with IM, it shows that you’re available. But it doesn’t work. I never get the messages (if you tried to send me an IM I wasn’t ignoring you — I didn’t get the message).
If you’ve successfully troubleshot the Yahoo IM feature, please let me know.
I really like the idea of starting conversations with people who are reading the blog; wish I could get the tools to work.
(What is the past tense of troubleshoot by the way? Troubleshot? Troubleshooted? Debugged? Gotten the damn thing to work?)

Cory Doctorow on not trading in your rights

via David Weinberger blogging the session at Supernova
“Cory Doctorow is reminding us that “content creators” have always sued new technologies, starting with those music pirates, the piano roll manufacturers. Now it’s the Broadcast Flag initiative that will put a bit into digital TV signals and require all devices touching them to honor that bit. He gives a terrific talk