July 2007 Archives

Copyleft And Marxism

By Rob Myers on July 30, 2007 8:47 PM | 13 Comments

I am a militant liberal, possibly a socialist libertarian. My political motto is "beware teleology", so I regard pluralism as the least worst option for society given what happens when societies fall under ideological closures. Including Neoliberalism. Pluralism has come to be the basis of my ongoing interest in copyleft. I believe it strongly supports pluralism. I am nonetheless not delusional regarding the scope and socioeconomic effects of copyleft. It is not a panacea, and I think that Negativland's Expanded Fair Use might be a better baseline for creative freedom in bourgeois capitalist society were it not for the practicalities.

My research over the last few years has only strengthened my regard for Stallmanism. This research has taken me through venture capitalism, the economics of Web 2.0, neoliberal ethics, the history of the enclosure and allotment movements, the levellers and diggers, 1968 in France, LIP self-management, various anarchist texts, the production of Classical Greek pottery, the history of collectives and LETS schemes, and all sorts of other historical and sociopolitical/economic moments. Oh and Lessig's writing and that of Isaiah Berlin and of Mackenzie Wark. I have maintained my interest in copyleft not due to doctrinal monomania but to being unable to find anything better given current historical conditions.

I'm writing this to try to gather my thoughts prior to responding to someone who has objected to my criticism of their essay. They have accused me of regarding copyleft as perfect and immutable and believing that anyone who doesn't share this opinion just needs to read the right books. I have taken several days to consider this and have come to the conclusion that my position will be practically indiscernible from that position for them, but that this is a mischaracterisation of what I believe.

I do believe that copyleft will support the ends of socialists and marxists within society better than a licensing scheme that seeks to refuse "the commons" to "capitalist exploitation of wage labour". I believe this because of my long consideration of the self-defeating effects of the Non-Commercial Creative Commons Licence and other discriminatory licenses, and because I don't believe that capital is stupid enough not to start selling picks and shovels to the workers who will be the only permitted users of such a licence if one is ever written.

I also believe that there is probably some interest for marxist students of the property question in essays titled "Why Software Should Not Have Owners" and "Did You Say Intellectual Property? It's A Seductive Mirage".

But I am interested to hear if any of my more marxisant readers think I am talking bollocks, and if so exactly why. Anyone?

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Mwahahahaha!

By Rob Myers on July 30, 2007 8:00 PM | No Comments

My Sunshot t-shirt has arrived.

Take that, causality!

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links for 2007-07-28

By Rob Myers on July 29, 2007 12:18 AM | No Comments

links for 2007-07-27

By Rob Myers on July 28, 2007 12:18 AM | No Comments

Today the BBC made it official — they have been corrupted by Microsoft.

By Rob Myers on July 27, 2007 9:09 PM | 5 Comments

Today the BBC made it official -- they have been corrupted by Microsoft.

With today's launch of the iPlayer, the BBC Trust has failed in its most basic of duties and handed over to Microsoft sole control of the on-line distribution of BBC programming. From today, you will need to own a Microsoft operating system to view BBC programming on the web.

****** http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/BBCcorrupted *******

Please Digg: http://tinyurl.com/3dzo57

Please Reddit: http://reddit.com/info/2a0qt/

Also, if you're in the North of England and would be interested ina potential protest at BBC Manchester on the same day, please considering joining 'Manchester Free Software'. As you may know, theBBC is soon to move large amounts of its London operations to Manchester and Salford.

http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsuk-manchester

If you're a British citizen or resident, you can also sign this petition:- http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/iplayer/

You can also leave comments about the service, and demand a service that works on free software systems, such as GNU/Linux, on the BBC iPlayer Messageboard - http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbiplayer/F7357542

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links for 2007-07-26

By Rob Myers on July 27, 2007 12:22 AM | No Comments

links for 2007-07-25

By Rob Myers on July 26, 2007 12:19 AM | No Comments

links for 2007-07-24

By Rob Myers on July 25, 2007 12:20 AM | No Comments

Ironised CC Licenses (BY-NC-SA and NC)

By Rob Myers on July 24, 2007 11:08 PM | No Comments

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Sunshot Live On YouTube

By Rob Myers on July 24, 2007 10:06 PM | No Comments

Whisky Dave has posted some classic Sunshot gig footage on Youtube. There's clips from two shows:

Middlesex University

Sunshot at Middlesex University part 1 of 4
Sunshot at Middlesex University part 2 of 4
Sunshot at Middlesex University part 3 of 4
Sunshot at Middlesex University part 4 of 4

The Bull & Gate

Sunshot at the Bull & Gate part 1 of 5
Sunshot at the Bull & Gate part 2 of 5
Sunshot at the Bull & Gate part 3 of 5
Sunshot at the Bull & Gate part 4 of 5
Sunshot at the Bull & Gate part 5 of 5

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Sunshot Wikipedia Page

By Rob Myers on July 24, 2007 9:57 PM | No Comments

I've started a Wikipedia page for Sunshot. Until I can dig out some old magazines it's basically just a discography:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshot

The page has a link to Whisky Dave's photos of the band performing live.

My ambition is to get their back catalogue on iTMS. ;-)

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That’s the Way To Do It

By Rob Myers on July 23, 2007 7:49 PM | No Comments

http://www.multiverse.org/fora/showthread.php?t=5699

The Mythanian: I understand that you sometimes allow other people to write stories using Jerry Cornelius and Co., so I was wondering if you could give me permission to use him, and quite possibly the rest of the cast.

Michael Moorcock: No problem. An acknowledgement would be nice. Good luck!


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Reveals, Cliffhangers, Endings and Spoilers In Participatory Media

By Rob Myers on July 23, 2007 7:39 PM | No Comments

Authors and media companies often try to build buzz or create an event around their work by holding back some information about it. The ending of the final Harry Potter book is a good example of this, as is what happens at the end of a series of Doctor Who. It's not just that the book or programme isn't released until its launch date, its that an often legally enforced code of conduct creates an active conspiracy of silence around what the denoument of the story will be.

It need not be the final events of a series. Episodes of a television series (or individual books or films in a series) can end in cliffhangers. Within an episode, developments in characters or plots can reveal new information that fundamentally affects the story or the setting. Mysteries or puzzles can be solved with the right information.

Many fans do want to experience cliffhangers and reveals without any prior knowledge. The unfolding of the story has a structure that they do not want ruined. For them, any information about what actually happens is a "spoiler".

Even tightly controlled media corporations can leak spoilers. For a participatroy project this isn't a danger, it is a certainty. All the information about the plot is available on a Wiki or in a mailing list. Spoiler-sensitive fans may not look in such places but search-engines, bloggers, and other fans may.

Locking this information away both breaks the participatory model and makes finding and promoting spoilers more appealing for internet trolls. Other strategies are needed in order to fit the square peg of reveals into the round hole of participatory story creation.

1. Inner Circle.

A small group of trusted individuals develop the reveal and keep it secret until it is needed to be produced. This can only work if the group have a trusted leadership position.

2. Just In Time.

To avoid anyone knowing what happens with a cliffhanger, don't write the resolution until after the episode featuring the cliffhanger is released. For spoilers or endings, create the details as late as possible before the release deadline.

To ensure that this does not make the plot incoherent, do set plot points and objectives ahead of time ("Book Seven features a final battle and resolution") but don't detail their outcome ("somebody dies but we don't know who").

3. Secret Vote.

Produce a number of possible outcomes and vote in secret on which will actually be used. This is different from a straight vote-driven plot in that the ending is stil created by part of the community. This will take some good community management but could be a good way of managing at least minor reveals.

4. Private Ideas.

People keep ideas for reveals secret but recorded until they are needed, at which point the best can be chosen.

Reveals and participation are difficult to bring together, but answering how they can be brought together will be important for when people start asking how they can worry about who dies at the end of the story in participatory culture.

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WRTJ Participation

By Rob Myers on July 23, 2007 6:53 PM | 2 Comments

The Baby Cow team filming WRTJ have used suggestions and even entire scripts from the WRTJ Wiki as the basis of various episodes. But audience participation in WRTJ has gone much further.

• Someone has written themself into the script as a character.
• Someone has written their house into the script as a location.
• Someone has written their existing fictitious character into the script.
• A TV station has written one of its journalist into the script.
• A radio station has written itself into the script as a setting for an episode set in a radio station.
• The German branch of The Church of Scientology are trying to write themselves in.
• And more examples are coming.

The advantage of having Baby Cow film all this is that the results are a coherent whole. This contrasts with "User Generated Content", which requires a video clips format or other framing device to be drawn together into a coherent whole.

To use a slightly strained Free Software metaphor, Baby Cow are in charge of the distro and they are the ones who make the build.

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links for 2007-07-21

By Rob Myers on July 22, 2007 12:18 AM | No Comments

links for 2007-07-18

By Rob Myers on July 19, 2007 12:22 AM | No Comments

Temporary Blog Theme

By Rob Myers on July 18, 2007 8:04 PM | 1 Comment

Matt pointed out that the blog theme I was using had an NC licence hard-coded at the bottom.

ffs

I'm using this theme until I can sort that out.

links for 2007-07-17

By Rob Myers on July 18, 2007 12:19 AM | No Comments

Shameless Call For Votes: T-Shirt Slogan on Threadless

By Rob Myers on July 16, 2007 1:22 PM | No Comments

Please vote for my "No, I will not code your net.art project for you" t-shirt slogan at Threadless:

http://www.threadless.com/profile/545743/Rob_Myers/slogans

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Ironised CC Licenses (BY-ND and BY-NC)

By Rob Myers on July 16, 2007 12:06 PM | 1 Comment

200707161151

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links for 2007-07-15

By Rob Myers on July 16, 2007 12:20 AM | 1 Comment

Where Are The Joneses? On Democracy and iTMS

By Rob Myers on July 15, 2007 7:46 PM | No Comments

Where Are The Joneses? channel for Democracy player (Free internet TV on GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows):

http://subscribe.getdemocracy.com/?url1=http%3A//feeds.feedburner.com/wherearethejonesesvodcast

Where Are The Joneses? podcast at iTunes Music Store (gratis on Mac and Windows):

http://feeds.feedburner.com/wherearethejonesesvodcast

Democracy and iTunes can both grab the latest episode for you, and iTunes can put it straight on your iPod. Now you can keep up with the Joneses automatically.

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links for 2007-07-11

By Rob Myers on July 12, 2007 12:19 AM | No Comments

Appear With The Joneses Via Channel 4

By Rob Myers on July 10, 2007 11:01 PM | No Comments

Last bit of WRTJ spam news for today:

http://wherearethejoneses.wikidot.com/forum/t-13426/channel-4-and-the-joneses-need-you

After appearing on the Channel 4 News and their website yesterday (9 July) and a full page spread in today's Guardian newspaper (10 July), we need to find a Jones wiki contributor to go out to meet the Joneses team on the road with Channel 4 news and appear in an episode.
So now you can (possibly) get yourself filmed in a script you've written (part of) along with a TV news reporter who is (presumably) writing themself into the script then mash that up however you like.

Get on the forums and get involved!

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Joneses At The Internet Archive

By Rob Myers on July 10, 2007 10:54 PM | No Comments

Grab the flv, mp4 or mov format versions of every episode so far of Where Are The joneses? from The Internet Archive:

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=where%20are%20the%20joneses

These should be better for playing online and for remixing, mashing and generally mucking about with. I think it should help with podcasts and Democracy TV as well. Take a look and get involved in scripting the next episodes.

If people want different formats then ask (or, even better, offer) in the forums:

http://wherearethejoneses.wikidot.com/forum:start

But bear in mind that VLC is very good at playing and converting different formats for you.

Let a thousand Joneses bloom!

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The Joneses On Page 3

By Rob Myers on July 10, 2007 10:31 PM | 2 Comments

Today's Guardian has an article on The Joneses on page three of the main paper!

See here (free subscription required, try bugmenot) :

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2122751,00.html

It's a good article but the print version does get one thing wrong (since fixed in the online version):

Because the content is tagged with a Creative Commons licence, allowing it to be freely re-edited for non-commercial use, the producers hope viewers will go one step further and re-edit and remix their own versions.
Gaaaaaah! Nooooo! For the love of Adam Smith! The Joneses is not NonCommercial! You can use it commercially under the Attribution-ShareAlike licence! This is not a bug, it is a core feature of the value of the project!

ShareAlike takes the internet "piracy" "problem" and turns it into a means of distribution, of content creation, and of new market identification. This works for The Joneses because from the point of view of the client The Joneses is a promotion, an advertisement. More copying, more modification to fit different audiences, and more unexpected distibution vectors and sites of consumption means reduced costs, increased reach, and better targeting.

NonCommercial would work against this. Noncommercial would make the project "sharecropping" and so reduce incentives for people to contribute to the project. And it would render some opportunities to distribute the project illegal or doubtful.

This is a major point but The Joneses turns so much current media industry wisdom on its head that it is not surprising that it's difficult to understand. It's frustrating to be working against the idea that NonCommercial is "The Creative Commons License"(sic), but it's great to have got to the stage where there is something out there to be working against it with.

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links for 2007-07-08

By Rob Myers on July 9, 2007 12:19 AM | No Comments

Excellent Songs Of The 1990s That I Would Be Amazed If You Had Heard

By Rob Myers on July 8, 2007 7:48 PM | 1 Comment

"Too Scared" - Sunshot
"My Mind Must Be Free" - Utah Saints
"Cut" - Miranda Sex Garden
"Pearly" - Radiohead
"Everyone Everywhere" - New Order

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Ironised CC Licenses

By Rob Myers on July 6, 2007 8:23 PM | No Comments

These are working so well that I think I'm going to make them into a series of published artworks. Despite just being intended as a satire for a small section of the Free Culture community they've grown in the making to mean something more. I've some further images to in the series to make, then I'll rework any that need it and format everything up for a release. I'll probably give the project a snappier title as well.

Thank you to everyone who has given me feedback on these, notably MANIK and Crosbie Fitch. I should also mention that actually starting this project was triggered in a positive way by MTAA's comments at iCommons regarding when the license of an artwork might be interesting.

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Open Streetmap Get The Netherlands

By Rob Myers on July 5, 2007 11:26 PM | 1 Comment

http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=223

A company called AND are donating streetmap data for the whole of the Netherlands to OSM. This will help OSM by getting the data for areas they haven't mapped, and by improving AND's data for some areas where OSM have more up-to-date data.

This is a major achievement for OSM. An entire country's worth of mapping information is being made free because of the existence of a Free mapping project.

I don't know the exact details of the deal but I think this could be a good example of the dynamics of how Free projects affect existing proprietary projects.

The existence of a Free equivalent to an existing proprietary project puts pressure on it to go Free before the new project supplants it. Possible historical examples of this in Free Software include QT and Motif and the free GTK and Gnome projects, Sun's Java and the various free Java implementations. If the proprietary project can go Free before the new project is complete or at least capable of competing with it then it can move into a leadership position in the Free community and retain many of the advantages of leading a project.

OSM is BY-SA. A vocal minority of the OSM community would like OSM to be Public Domain or to have a licence tailored to geodata or to the economic interests of bespoke cartographers in some way. There are arguments to be made in favour of this, although I don't agree with them, and the AND deal may show that BY-SA is better for encouraging commercial contributions to Free projects.

BY-SA prevents companies just taking OSM's maps for themselves and improving their own maps without returning any further improvements or passing on OSM's freedom to their own customers. Attribution only or public domain wouldn't have this effect. So this encourages contributions. And by doing this, BY-SA also protects companies investment in OSM, ensuring other companies can't just take contributors work and use it without return or without contributors keeping the freedom to use OSM's work. Again, this encourages contributions.

So I think this may show at least in part why it is important to start Free projects even if they seem almost impossible tasks (such as mapping the whole world). And why it is important to use copyleft for these projects.

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WRTJ: Feedback

By Rob Myers on July 5, 2007 10:25 PM | No Comments

http://wherearethejoneses.wikidot.com/set:feedback-home-make

Baby Cow are keeping track of which contributor's ideas are going into each episode.

This is brilliant. It's like the changelog or the Wikipedia revisions page. And it helps organise attribution.

e.g.:

2007 06 25 The Joneses (rev. 3) 5 Jul 2007 - 17:00
The upload today Anything in common is a response to the gingerninja blog on Friday. Jonti is exploring what Ian and Dawn have in common. We could also pick up the direct ginger question later. The...

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Primary Colours (Red, Yellow, Blue)

By Rob Myers on July 5, 2007 9:52 PM | No Comments

200707052249 200707052248 200707052254

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UNKLE - War Stories

By Rob Myers on July 5, 2007 9:25 PM | No Comments

UNKLE's "Psyence Fiction" was one of my favourite albums of the 1990s, a genuine step forward in the dialogue between American and British music, bringing trip-hop, rap, indie and dance together and further. The follow-up, "Never Never Land" wasn't very good, with wimpy vocals and lyrics and aimless music.

UNKLE's third album, "War Stories", is very good. Buy it. It's easier for you to listen to samples than me to explain what they're like, so:

http://www.unkle.com/

The only downside is that the limited edition is packed a bit tight into its slipcase. You'll need about 20 minutes and a spatula to get the CDs out.

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Seller’s Remorse

By Rob Myers on July 5, 2007 8:15 AM | 2 Comments

Dave Winer placed one of the RSS specs under a CC Licence.

Now he wants to stop one particular group producing a revised spec.

So he's asking how to do this, phrasing it as a dispute about a work under the license.

Modulo moral rights you can't control how people use the work. And even if you could, they could just produce a new document for the spec.

This isn't a problem with the licences. It's a social issue.

http://scripting.wordpress.com/2007/06/20/scripting-news-for-6202007/#comment-79526

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Encoding Useful Information

By Rob Myers on July 4, 2007 10:42 PM | No Comments

200707042238

Ironised CC Licenses (BY-NC-SA)

By Rob Myers on July 4, 2007 10:33 PM | No Comments

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Bill Oddie!

By Rob Myers on July 4, 2007 6:55 PM | 2 Comments

The Joneses have met their first European sibling. He's an MEP. He knows the names of cocktails and how to play drinking games.

http://www.wherearethejoneses.com/

Add jokes, suggestions, scripts, etc. here:

http://wherearethejoneses.wikidot.com/

I'm not sure how many references it will be possible to get to Bill Oddie into the series without it becoming a legal problem, but let's see what we can do. ;-)
Update: Fixed wiki URL typo.

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links for 2007-07-03

By Rob Myers on July 4, 2007 12:19 AM | No Comments

links for 2007-07-02

By Rob Myers on July 3, 2007 12:21 AM | No Comments

Various lengths of representation for “All one-, two-, three- & four part combinations of lines in four directions and in four colours�

By Rob Myers on July 2, 2007 8:55 PM | No Comments

200707022153

k = grey, y = yellow, r = red, b = blue

C = { k, y, r, b }

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Open Literature HOWTO (Beta)

By Rob Myers on July 1, 2007 9:42 PM | No Comments

From the earliest mythology and folklore, literature has been written collaboratively. In the mass media era, movies and television shows are routinely written by teams or by a number of individuals working in turn. Open projects such as Wikipedia and the Linux Kernel show how to organise collaborative writing projects in a free and participatory way.

Principles

Projects Should Be Easy To Start

Anybody should be able to start a project. Registration is fine, and booting racist or homophobic projects out is fine, but the barriers to starting a project should be low.

Projects Should Have A Strong And Well Defined Purpose

Everybody needs to know what they're working on. "A novel" isn't good enough. "A 1200-page romantic novel in the style of Barbara Cartland but with ninjas and pirates" is a good starting point. The purpose of the project may change as the community grows. If people aren't happy with the direction of the project they can fork it.

Projects Should Have An Owner

It seems counter-intuitive for projects that are meant to be collaborative, but projects need to have a "benevolent dictator" to guide them and to facilitate discussions. Usually this is the project's founder.

Strong Modular Structure With Module Owners

A novel breaks down easily into chapters, a television series breaks down into episodes, and these break down into scenes and into lines of dialogue. The structure of the story is part of the design work of the project, and is one of the main ways of breaking down the project into manageable chunks, of division of labour.

Low Barrier To Entry To Projects

It should be easy to contribute to a project and easy to get involved. Contributions to draft and discussion areas of the wiki, and contributions to and involvement with the mailing list should be encouraged. Once an individual has contributed two useful revisions (for example)

High Quality Control With Good Feedback

Anything that doesn't meet quality standards should be rejected with reasons and advice given.

Avoid Edit Wars

It is very easy to waste weeks on Wikipedia-style "edit wars". Ensure that changes to pages are gathered on the discussion page or mailing list rather than on the main versions of pages. If page edits start getting out of hand the lead for the part of the project represented by the page should lock it and manage changes.

Avoid Walled Gardens And Sharecropping

To give people the confidence to contribute to a project make sure that they share the value of the project equally. Don't lock the work away on a private website or use a noncommercial or non-standard licence.

Avoid "Consequences"

The principles and systems in this document are designed to ensure both that projects don't end up as a glorified game of "consequences", with text randomly following on from previous writing. A good example of a project that ended up as Consequences was Penguin's "A Million Penguins" project, but many Wikipedia pages show that too much editing can lead to Consequences as surely as too little planning.

Project Roles

Project Lead

The "benevolent dictator" for the project.

Chapter, Scene Or Character Lead

The "champion" for some aspect of the structure of the story. Major characters, story arcs, locations and other features of the plot can all have leads. Each chapter should have a lead as well. Depending on the nature of the story there can be just a plot lead and a couple of character leads, or there can be many leads for each e.g. fantasy race or alien world.

Writer

Anyone adding text to the main story pages. There's no reason for writers not to specialise in dialogue, description, or sketching out well-paced scene structure

Researchers

Any setting or character will need some research or fact-checking. This can be a good way for people who don't regard themselves as literary to contribute to a project. Research tasks and information can be stored on the wiki.

Editor

Wikis and other systems need managing, and any writing benefits from review.

Proofreader

Spell checking cannot catch subtle grammatical errors, continuity errors or logical errors. Proofreading is very important and is a good way of capturing value from casual contributors or site visitors.

Project Resources

Mailing List

A mailing list is the focus for communication, discussion and co-ordination.

Weblog

A weblog is a good public face and entry point for the project. News, calls for contributions and samples of work from the project can all be blogged, and comments can be a good way of getting the public involved.

Wiki

The wiki is where the project will take shape. Part of the wiki will be the "Bible" for the story, like a TV Series "Bible", part will be for drafts and ideas. Characters, locations, research, story arcs and story structure, chapters and collected ideas should all have their own pages.

Simple Projects

Simple projects may grow, but there are two simple models for such projects: iterative and sequential. Even simple projects need an agreed structure (which can be revised the same as large projects) and benefit from sketches and details co-ordinated on a wiki and in email.

Iterative

One writer produces a draft of the entire story. Other writers revise it in turn until a final version is produced.

Sequential

Each author is assigned a section of the story and completes it. Some editing may be required to fix any flow problems.

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Ironised CC Licenses (BY-NC-ND)

By Rob Myers on July 1, 2007 2:39 PM | No Comments

200707011438

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links for 2007-06-30

By Rob Myers on July 1, 2007 12:18 AM | No Comments
  • New Art: Using Yorick's laughter
    "This business move, not uncommon among the creme de la creme of contemporary artists, is brilliant, of course. You either get it, or you don't. If you go for the bluff, it automatically ceases to be a bluff."
    (tags: hirst skull critique)
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