- "So explain in your own words how WhereAreTheJoneses' works?" via zeroinfluencer
- "Prism -- an astroturf organization established by science publishers to discredit free open access journals -- has been caught using a bunch of infringing Getty images"
- "One of the many tragedies of the conventional economic mind is the grip that the “tragedy of the commons” has upon it. "
August 2007 Archives
As a consumer in that irrelevant secondary market known only as "the rest of the world" who specifically bought all the Futurama DVDs in order to communicate to the market that I would like more Futurama cartoons, can I ask what the best places to search for torrents of "Bender's Big Score" will be when it is released in the US? I only ask because someone seems to have forgotten to arrange for releases anywhere else, and I wouldn't want to trouble them with silly little things like rewarding them monetarily for their effort.
I saw a market stall selling "Ratatouille" DVDs here the other day. My disapproval was limited to not buying one. Pixar are going to be sending us their scratched old US reels some time in the autumn, so I suppose we should be grateful. I do so enjoy being the subject of such contempt from companies I so want to support. Not.
I saw a market stall selling "Ratatouille" DVDs here the other day. My disapproval was limited to not buying one. Pixar are going to be sending us their scratched old US reels some time in the autumn, so I suppose we should be grateful. I do so enjoy being the subject of such contempt from companies I so want to support. Not.
- "I call this the entertainment economy." or the attention economy. An interesting philosophical thought experiment about a post-scarcity world.
- A masterful deconstruction of Fisk's scarily credulous 9/11 conspiracy article.
- Some excellent music economics futurology from Crosbie.
- A skeleton at the music collecting society feast. (I personally believe that voluntary reform can bear on unreformed projects and societies, so it is still a net positive.)
- "We study the impact of Peer to Peer technology and thought on society"
- "mass user-driven innovation is reshaping organizations, with users becoming increasingly involved as co-creators of products and services"
- "We-Think: the power of mass creativity is about what the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporat
- "Every single Windows XP and Vista installation -- except possibly those with volume license keys -- is being marked as counterfeit"
The GPL has a patent-style requirement of disclosure for the source code of binary executables that are publicly distributed.
If software was only written in interpreted languages, if tools existed to manipulate binary executables with the same semantic detail that source code can be edited with, or if computing machinery was programmed using switch combinations that were published in books, such a requirement would not be necessary. The distributed form of the software would be complete, it would be the software.
But compiling source into a binary executable, whatever its practical benefits, is a form of obfuscation and a means of locking software to a particular piece of hardware. For those who would modify or move software that they have received it is an inconvenience that is major enough to hamper or prevent their use of the software. This is why the GPL requires disclosure, to protect the freedom to use the software.
So requiring source for published software is not an intrusion into privacy, it is not coercion and it is not unfair economically. It is a neccessity. The source code for software is the software, it is the only complete representation of the software. Disclosure of it is a necessary measure to ensure that the software is actually distributed. Otherwise binary executables become the public tip of a private iceberg of code that can impact on the private or public life of those that use it.
Private development and use of software should be possible. But it is important not to confuse my right to develop software privately with a right to prevent you using that software privately when I publish it. Your private use of my software is public relative to me but this is only a matter of perspective. DRM and binary executables make private use of software impossible; they make your private use of my software a public use of it. Their effects should be nullified.
For cultural works, private development and use of work should be possible and supported by licenses. The Creative Commons licences do not allow for this. Possibly the practicalities of this and the effects of the minutiae of copyright law mean that this does not have much effect in practice, but it would be good to have the licences acknowledge both a private domain of use of culture and when this domain crosses over into the public sphere.
If software was only written in interpreted languages, if tools existed to manipulate binary executables with the same semantic detail that source code can be edited with, or if computing machinery was programmed using switch combinations that were published in books, such a requirement would not be necessary. The distributed form of the software would be complete, it would be the software.
But compiling source into a binary executable, whatever its practical benefits, is a form of obfuscation and a means of locking software to a particular piece of hardware. For those who would modify or move software that they have received it is an inconvenience that is major enough to hamper or prevent their use of the software. This is why the GPL requires disclosure, to protect the freedom to use the software.
So requiring source for published software is not an intrusion into privacy, it is not coercion and it is not unfair economically. It is a neccessity. The source code for software is the software, it is the only complete representation of the software. Disclosure of it is a necessary measure to ensure that the software is actually distributed. Otherwise binary executables become the public tip of a private iceberg of code that can impact on the private or public life of those that use it.
Private development and use of software should be possible. But it is important not to confuse my right to develop software privately with a right to prevent you using that software privately when I publish it. Your private use of my software is public relative to me but this is only a matter of perspective. DRM and binary executables make private use of software impossible; they make your private use of my software a public use of it. Their effects should be nullified.
For cultural works, private development and use of work should be possible and supported by licenses. The Creative Commons licences do not allow for this. Possibly the practicalities of this and the effects of the minutiae of copyright law mean that this does not have much effect in practice, but it would be good to have the licences acknowledge both a private domain of use of culture and when this domain crosses over into the public sphere.
Technorati Tags: free culture, free software
On my art foundation course at Kingston Polytechnic [1] I was set the task of making a painting by combining two other paintings. A mash-up, in other words. The two images I chose were a Jackson Pollock drip painting and a Fututist cyclist by Umberto Boccioni. I hadn't encountered the work of Art & Language at the time, so this wasn't based on their "Portrait of Lenin In The Style Of Jackson Pollock".
I had a problem with the Boccioni cyclist. I couldn't make out all the details of the cyclist amongst the abstract geometric shapes of the Futurist painting. I'd copied a Picasso cubist painting from the Tate [2] on my A-Level art course but I still wasn't used to analysing highly abstracted images in detail. This is a Freedom 1 situation: I needed to study the work in order to complete my task. Luckily the college library had a book containing reproductions of the preparatory sketches for that painting. These showed how the final composition had been derived through a series of drawings starting from the forms of a representational sketch of a cyclist.
This experience taught me the value of having access to source material for cultural works. It could be argued that access to preparatory work is not necessary to appreciate the finished work, that it is private or that the public have no right to access it, and this might be true. But for the purpose of the task that I had to complete as an artist as part of my artistic training and practice I needed to study the work more deeply than the finished work itself allowed me to.
Boccioni's painting is an autographic work, it has no score [3], but it is the product of a process of development that is not encapsulated in the finished product. The finished, exhibited, work is the public tip of a private iceberg. Disclosure of the materials of this private process of development is beneficial to those who wish or need to study it, notably to other practitioners, and thereby to society. Whether this is a matter of rights or not (I am very open to debate on this) it is a clear social benefit.
Unlike the GPL the Creative Commons licences do not require the disclosure of preparatory or source material for published works. This is probably correct both given CC's emphasis on mash-up style derivation of mass media work and the burden that providing source for CD or DVD-based work would place on authors and publishers. But providing source material or preparatory work for cultural works is a high ideal for Free Culture practitioners and deserves more consideration than it has seen so far.
The ideal cultural source will be:
So which source material would I take out a second mortgage just to get some DVDs of?
I try to provide as much source material and preparatory work as I can. This is difficult for older work where disks have become corrupt, older versions of Corel Draw formats cannot be converted to well-structured modern vector formats, or I have lost sketchbooks or prints. For current projects I provide:
----
[1] I attended a polytechnic (a technical college) but graduated from a university thanks to Kingston gaining university status after I finished my course but before I received my diploma. This isn't relevant to anything but has always amused me. The Oxbridge media commentators who covered Kingston's change of status weren't so amused.
[2] Now Tate Britain. It was a seated female nude. Book and postcard reproductions destroyed much of the detail, so I could not have painted a successful copy without actually sketching the painting itself.
[3] Nelson Goodman distinguishes between "autographic" works with no score, such as paintings and sculptures, and "allographic" works with a score, such as a novel or a symphony.
I had a problem with the Boccioni cyclist. I couldn't make out all the details of the cyclist amongst the abstract geometric shapes of the Futurist painting. I'd copied a Picasso cubist painting from the Tate [2] on my A-Level art course but I still wasn't used to analysing highly abstracted images in detail. This is a Freedom 1 situation: I needed to study the work in order to complete my task. Luckily the college library had a book containing reproductions of the preparatory sketches for that painting. These showed how the final composition had been derived through a series of drawings starting from the forms of a representational sketch of a cyclist.
This experience taught me the value of having access to source material for cultural works. It could be argued that access to preparatory work is not necessary to appreciate the finished work, that it is private or that the public have no right to access it, and this might be true. But for the purpose of the task that I had to complete as an artist as part of my artistic training and practice I needed to study the work more deeply than the finished work itself allowed me to.
Boccioni's painting is an autographic work, it has no score [3], but it is the product of a process of development that is not encapsulated in the finished product. The finished, exhibited, work is the public tip of a private iceberg. Disclosure of the materials of this private process of development is beneficial to those who wish or need to study it, notably to other practitioners, and thereby to society. Whether this is a matter of rights or not (I am very open to debate on this) it is a clear social benefit.
Unlike the GPL the Creative Commons licences do not require the disclosure of preparatory or source material for published works. This is probably correct both given CC's emphasis on mash-up style derivation of mass media work and the burden that providing source for CD or DVD-based work would place on authors and publishers. But providing source material or preparatory work for cultural works is a high ideal for Free Culture practitioners and deserves more consideration than it has seen so far.
The ideal cultural source will be:
- Transparent - In a format that is easily editable by human beings. For electronic versions, preferably a text-based format.
- Full quality - Of a standard that allows you to at least recreate the distributed format (so at least one generation above the released version).
- Complete - Consisting of at least the materials required to recreate the distributed version, with any cues or lead ins included.
- Unencumbered - In a free and open format unencumbered by patents, DRM or any future impediment to use.
- Structured - Preferably in a vector, multi-track or other rich format.
So which source material would I take out a second mortgage just to get some DVDs of?
- The sequencer or master tracks for the sessions for "Floodland" by The Sisters of Mercy.
- The Lisp source code for Harold Cohen's AARON
- The rushes for Bladerunner
- Illustrator files for Julian Opie's portraits
- Photoshop files for Fiona Rae's paintings
I try to provide as much source material and preparatory work as I can. This is difficult for older work where disks have become corrupt, older versions of Corel Draw formats cannot be converted to well-structured modern vector formats, or I have lost sketchbooks or prints. For current projects I provide:
- Structured vector files of images, including preparatory and discarded work in a series.
- Preparatory sketches via flickr.
- Discussion and sketches of work in progress via this blog.
----
[1] I attended a polytechnic (a technical college) but graduated from a university thanks to Kingston gaining university status after I finished my course but before I received my diploma. This isn't relevant to anything but has always amused me. The Oxbridge media commentators who covered Kingston's change of status weren't so amused.
[2] Now Tate Britain. It was a seated female nude. Book and postcard reproductions destroyed much of the detail, so I could not have painted a successful copy without actually sketching the painting itself.
[3] Nelson Goodman distinguishes between "autographic" works with no score, such as paintings and sculptures, and "allographic" works with a score, such as a novel or a symphony.
Technorati Tags: free culture
robmyers - Open Source Art Again
This article that I wrote last year about how "Open Source", Free Software and Free Culture relate to art has been getting some attention again recently. If you haven't read it I do recommend it, many people seem to find it interesting.
This article that I wrote last year about how "Open Source", Free Software and Free Culture relate to art has been getting some attention again recently. If you haven't read it I do recommend it, many people seem to find it interesting.
- An intelligent and progressive anti-war and pro-civil-liberties blog.
- "This project enables members of Buma/Stemra to use the 3 non-commercial CC licenses for non-commercial distribution of their works. It also allows Dutch composers and lyricists who already use the CC NonCommercial license to join Buma/Stemra and have the
Back to "Like That" after the CC Ironies.
- "From interaction, to engagement, to participation, to conversation to affinity to community? What would that look like?"
- The new and improved furtherfield (new review on there from me soon ;-) ).
- The ironised licence images meme continues to spread.
- The weblog post of Matt's image, along with the SVG.
- "On Friday 7th September, the dad will finally be revealed as the Joneses' adventure draws to a close. We need you to tell us who you think the father is. It could be anybody! So post a response in the forum and let's hear who you think the daddy is!"
- "The reactions are in from YouTube users about the addition of video ads, and it's a wholly negative response. Part of the issue is that the YouTube blog tried to spin this as a way of putting users in control"
Profits from recording vs. other revenue:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9735
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/16/050516ta_talk_surowiecki
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=959
Impact of filesharing on musicians:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html
http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
Useful data and a proposal for a way of *increasing* recording revenue IMHO:
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5013
(From a post to cc-community. janisian.com article from Laura Creighton on cc-community.)
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_1/kretschmer/
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=9735
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/16/050516ta_talk_surowiecki
http://www.sdcitybeat.com/article.php?id=959
Impact of filesharing on musicians:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070212-8813.html
http://torrentfreak.com/why-most-artists-profit-from-piracy/
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
Useful data and a proposal for a way of *increasing* recording revenue IMHO:
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5013
(From a post to cc-community. janisian.com article from Laura Creighton on cc-community.)
Technorati Tags: free culture, music, notes-towards-free-culture
To produce “dynamic artistic practice” AARON would have to create AARONs. It would have to do what Harold Cohen does; set immediate and long term goals, create systems, evaluate results, reflect on its achievements and work this meta-knowledge into its goals and systems.
This sounds like the sort of goalpost-moving that has always plagued AI. If a computer can play chess then chess playing must not be a sign of intelligence… But "dynamic artistic practice" would be relatively simple to achieve given a system of axiomatic graphical microdomains and a Lisp-style function composition system.
The microdomain approach is the one that Douglas Hofstadter and FARG took: find a simple task that is representative of an aspect of creative behaviour and then analyze it in depth.
AARON, like any painter, just pushes pigments around in 2D. It's a historically sufficient aesthetic domain in which to create and evaluate constraints or axioms.
It may even generate historically novel techical practice, Margaret Boden's “h-creativity” from The Creative Mind. But this wouldn't be necessary to satisfy the requirements of “dynamic artistic production”, as Damien Hirst's appropriations show.
So I'm not making a ridiculous demand of an AARON-like system. This behaviour could be shown by a fairly simple system (like Copycat), although to be aesthetically as well as conceptually satisfying it would need to be more complex.
(From an answer to a comment by Yaxu below.)
This sounds like the sort of goalpost-moving that has always plagued AI. If a computer can play chess then chess playing must not be a sign of intelligence… But "dynamic artistic practice" would be relatively simple to achieve given a system of axiomatic graphical microdomains and a Lisp-style function composition system.
The microdomain approach is the one that Douglas Hofstadter and FARG took: find a simple task that is representative of an aspect of creative behaviour and then analyze it in depth.
AARON, like any painter, just pushes pigments around in 2D. It's a historically sufficient aesthetic domain in which to create and evaluate constraints or axioms.
It may even generate historically novel techical practice, Margaret Boden's “h-creativity” from The Creative Mind. But this wouldn't be necessary to satisfy the requirements of “dynamic artistic production”, as Damien Hirst's appropriations show.
So I'm not making a ridiculous demand of an AARON-like system. This behaviour could be shown by a fairly simple system (like Copycat), although to be aesthetically as well as conceptually satisfying it would need to be more complex.
(From an answer to a comment by Yaxu below.)
Technorati Tags: art computing, generative art
The whole point is that there is no depth, and depth is just another name - treasured by the hermeneuts - for transcendence.
Where does a truth come from then, if its process is strictly immanent and it is not given as the secret depth or intimate essence of the situation? [...] it has its origins in a disappearance.
- Alain Badiou, Theoretical Writings, p122
Badiou is fascinating for his genuinely atheistic philosophy built on the infinities of set theory. He's a Lacanian but we won't mention that.Technorati Tags: philosophy
Inclosure, thou'rt a curse upon the land
And tasteless was the wretch who thy existence
plann'd
- John Clare.
And tasteless was the wretch who thy existence
plann'd
- John Clare.
Technorati Tags: free culture
- "NASA has chosen the Internet Archive to build a giant, free, online collection of still and moving images."
- Record the following script in your best Austrian accent and send it to WRTJ...
- "The company may end up benefiting from discoveries of new uses in addition to benefiting from being a brand that opened up the conversation with its users. "
One of the motivations for draw-something was my memory of my younger self's desire to make a program that was better at art than they were. This was an ambition born of cyberpunk literature and media and of the utter incomprehensibility of perspective instruction books to me at that time.
draw-something is not better at art than I am. Art Computing courses should teach their students on day one the difference between static technical competence and dynamic artistic practice. AARON is part of a dynamic artistic practice but is not a producer of dynamic artistic practice, Harold Cohen is. As a child I had a book featuring an illustration of AARON at work. It made a lasting impression.
draw-something is not better at drawing than I am. draw-something does imitate my drawing style at the micro level very well, it captures my "hand". Or I have captured my hand in it. I have tried to do so in a way that models the physical failings of my drawing style rather than just wobbling lines after they have been generated.
What draw-something is much better than me at is just have fun with shape and colour. Opponents of Artificial Intelligence will You don't have to be an opponent of Artificial Intelligence to will point out that draw-something isn't actually having fun. But performatively speaking something is. The fun is there. Possibly it's me, sublimating this into draw-something. But then I wouldn't have that precise kind of fun otherwise, and I'm not having it as draw-something is not-having it.
Both proponents and opponents of AI, and most right-thinking artists and critics, will cringe at the mention of something as nebulous as "fun". Which makes me think I might be on to something. ;-)
draw-something is not better at art than I am. Art Computing courses should teach their students on day one the difference between static technical competence and dynamic artistic practice. AARON is part of a dynamic artistic practice but is not a producer of dynamic artistic practice, Harold Cohen is. As a child I had a book featuring an illustration of AARON at work. It made a lasting impression.
draw-something is not better at drawing than I am. draw-something does imitate my drawing style at the micro level very well, it captures my "hand". Or I have captured my hand in it. I have tried to do so in a way that models the physical failings of my drawing style rather than just wobbling lines after they have been generated.
What draw-something is much better than me at is just have fun with shape and colour. Opponents of Artificial Intelligence will You don't have to be an opponent of Artificial Intelligence to will point out that draw-something isn't actually having fun. But performatively speaking something is. The fun is there. Possibly it's me, sublimating this into draw-something. But then I wouldn't have that precise kind of fun otherwise, and I'm not having it as draw-something is not-having it.
Both proponents and opponents of AI, and most right-thinking artists and critics, will cringe at the mention of something as nebulous as "fun". Which makes me think I might be on to something. ;-)
Technorati Tags: art, art computing, artificial intelligence, draw-something, generative art
- "why doesn't Adobe open source their creative suite?" I think this is the only thing that will prevent MS wiping them out.
- ""Ford have put up all the money," says Normal. "Yes, she drives a Ford S-Max, but I've got to say we've had no instructions from Ford to feature the car.""
- "We decided to go back to one of the co-originators of the term and ask how he sees the development of the idea he seeded."
- The owner of the Web 2.0 trademark on why Eben should take more notice of data freedom.
The series of ironised CC license images is now available for viewing and downloading as a set at:
http://www.robmyers.org/art/cc_ironies
http://www.robmyers.org/art/cc_ironies
Technorati Tags: art, creative commons
"OurSpace" by Christine Harold.http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/H/harold_ourspace.htmlIn "OurSpace" Christine Harold has produced a deep, subtle and thought-provoking history and critique of the strategies that activists have used to try to resist corporate enclosure of public social space over the last fifty years. Harold places strategies such as parody, appropriation, piracy, and amplification within their historical and social context to draw out their strengths and limitations for contemporary circumstances. And then, crucially, she explains how these strategies can be taken further.OurSpace presents a well-argued analysis of the hubris and unintentional complicity of Naomi Klein, Adbusters and of contemporary academic and activist soi-disant Situationists. It is also presents well-argued analysis of existing critiques of them. There are no sacred cows in OurSpace but nor are there any scapegoats. Adbusters may be attacking the wrong target with their talk of an "image machine", argues Harold, but the strategy of intensification that they deploy with their Black Spot sneakers shows a way forward. This is a well-balanced and constructive critique.Some critics and opponents of Free Culture seem to regard it as an attempt to apply Free Software ideology to culture in general for no good reason. OurSpace describes one good reason by describing a genuine threat to the openness of society and positioning Free Culture activism, including the use of Creative Commons licences, as a possible contemporary answer to that threat.Harold explores the relation of commerce to culture and counterculture in depth, identifying the positive social effects of social media and mass media in their historical contexts. It goes on, as with the Black Spot example, to identify strategies of reform and exemplification that could perform Naomi Klein's elusive "Judo Throw" on the forms of capital rather than just its discarded images. This is a good read for those building brands as well as for those trying to deconstruct them.I cannot recommend OurSpace highly enough to anyone with an interest in Free Culture or media/brand/corporate politics. I found that it challenged some of my long-held positions while providing me with a better foundation for others. And the author has set up a wiki for the book, so if there's anything you really don't agree with you can comment there.
Technorati Tags: critique, free culture, review
- "If Dawn and Ian returned to Britain, would you like to volunteer your home / workplace / shed for them to film in?"
- Want to be the voice of a Jones? Join in here. "At the moment it's just a list of a few possible situations, so get stuck in and - by next week - we'll all have chiselled it into a script."
- "I get particular pleasure when I map an area that no other map shows. Here's a comparison of OSM and Google Maps, you'll find a similar amount of coverage in Multimap, Streetmap, A-Z and others"
CC Ironies SVG
Here's an archive of the SVG files for the ironised cc license images series.
The archive and the images will be added to the art section of this site soon. I'm uploading this now because it's ready. Release early...
Here's an archive of the SVG files for the ironised cc license images series.
The archive and the images will be added to the art section of this site soon. I'm uploading this now because it's ready. Release early...
- "There appear to be several critical new features of the new XXIst Century Socialist breakthrough. We will review some of the most important" via dstfw...
- "“The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier," by Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill, will only be published in the United States due to international copyright concerns and related issues."
- "As always Brick Lane is home to the most interesting posters…"
- "He tells people what they want to hear, setting up a false dichotomy between some mythical group of elite ontologists and the rag-tag uprising of mass categorization."
Any successful movement or cause will attract those that cannot generate their own social capital. Free Software and Free Culture are no exception. From a right-wing ultra-corporate position comes the threat of sharecropping. From a left-wing paleo-marxist position comes the threat of entryism. Both threaten the value of Free Culture to society as a whole and thereby to themselves.
The value of Free Culture is realised through participation. I have helped organizations ranging from a Fortune 100 company to a local community group to participate in Free Culture. I have done this because I believe that all will add value to and benefit from the value of Free Culture.
For this benefit to be gained, we must participate equally as part of a pluralistic society. Trying to gain an advantage by imposing a teleology on others, by instrumentalizing the actions of others, or by selectively excluding others is not participation. It is coercion.
Such coercion destroys the value of a project not only to society as a whole but to those who organize the project because it reduces participation and downstream value. It breaks the irony of copyleft. It is self defeating.
Entryism, a term I am borrowing from leftist polemic, tries to instrumentalise Free Culture as part of the class struggle or against Empire. It tries to take over a more successful project and impose its own concerns on that project. Since this is coercion it will be self defeating. It will therefore damage both the cause of Free Software and whatever cause the groupuscule that attempts it has other than publicity.
Sharecropping, a term popularised by Lawrence Lessig, tries to instrumentalise Free Culture as part of a project of corporate wealth creation. Far too much of Web 2.0 falls under this category. Any project with terms and conditions that give the project organizer unlimited use of your work, or any NC-based corporate project, is sharecropping. Since this is coercion it will be self defeating. Sharecropping usually has a larger advertising budget than entryism so this will take longer to become apparent.
I am not arguing against capitalists or socialists (or whoever) being involved either in the practice of Free culture or in the debates around it. Far from it. I believe that this broad involvement is what makes Free Culture valuable. What I am arguing is that the readymade ideological idées fixes of both neoliberalism and paleo-marxism are not necessarily effective substitutes for the practical solutions of Free Culture and Free Software judged by the terms of those ideologies.
The value of Free Culture is realised through participation. I have helped organizations ranging from a Fortune 100 company to a local community group to participate in Free Culture. I have done this because I believe that all will add value to and benefit from the value of Free Culture.
For this benefit to be gained, we must participate equally as part of a pluralistic society. Trying to gain an advantage by imposing a teleology on others, by instrumentalizing the actions of others, or by selectively excluding others is not participation. It is coercion.
Such coercion destroys the value of a project not only to society as a whole but to those who organize the project because it reduces participation and downstream value. It breaks the irony of copyleft. It is self defeating.
Entryism, a term I am borrowing from leftist polemic, tries to instrumentalise Free Culture as part of the class struggle or against Empire. It tries to take over a more successful project and impose its own concerns on that project. Since this is coercion it will be self defeating. It will therefore damage both the cause of Free Software and whatever cause the groupuscule that attempts it has other than publicity.
Sharecropping, a term popularised by Lawrence Lessig, tries to instrumentalise Free Culture as part of a project of corporate wealth creation. Far too much of Web 2.0 falls under this category. Any project with terms and conditions that give the project organizer unlimited use of your work, or any NC-based corporate project, is sharecropping. Since this is coercion it will be self defeating. Sharecropping usually has a larger advertising budget than entryism so this will take longer to become apparent.
I am not arguing against capitalists or socialists (or whoever) being involved either in the practice of Free culture or in the debates around it. Far from it. I believe that this broad involvement is what makes Free Culture valuable. What I am arguing is that the readymade ideological idées fixes of both neoliberalism and paleo-marxism are not necessarily effective substitutes for the practical solutions of Free Culture and Free Software judged by the terms of those ideologies.
Technorati Tags: free culture, politics
The No-Derivatives Creative Commons licence module and the GNU FDL's Immutable Sections appear to allow the circulation of works of opinion or expression while restricting the ability of malicious parties to misrepresent them. For political, polemical or confessional works it is clearly important not only to the author but to society that these works not be misrepresented.
It is not however clear that restrictive licences do more good than harm as a means to this end. There are already social and legal measures in place to prevent the misrepresentation of works. And restrictive licences harm the ability both to propagate and critique the works.
Socially there are strong social norms against plagiarism, falsification of results or quotes, misattribution of works and opinions, or misrepresentation of views or data. There is also an expectation of a right of reply and a right to corrections to breaches of these norms in most media. These rights may be enforced by industry bodies or by government agencies.
Legally there are laws against passing off of goods, laws preventing misattribution under the moral right of Paternity, laws against the mistreatment of works under the moral right of Integrity, laws against libel or slander, and laws protecting "personality rights".
Within Free Software and Free Culture there are also licence requirements that protect against misattribution. Misattribution is arguably the core issue of misrepresentation of works. The GNU FDL and the CC licences require that derivative versions be clearly marked, and neither Debian nor The OSI regard this as a limit on freedom.
People and organizations do publish the results of breaking these norms, laws and licenses. Some do so illegally but there are also specific social and legal cases where this is allowed and even necessary.
Socially the practices of parody, satire, critique and debate all require use of the work that the author may not agree with. This use may involve quotation, wholesale use, transformative use or untransformed recontextualization.
Legally these social practices are encoded in exceptions to copyright such as Fair Use or Fair Dealing. Both the new GNU GPL 3 and the CC licences explicitly state their support for Fair Use. The GNU FDL should as well.
Using Fair Use and even minor rhetorical skill a malicious commentator can easily use context and selective quotation to argue that an author's position is the opposite of the one that they actually hold. Placing a work under a restrictive licence does not prevent this. It simply gives a false sense of security to the author. And it allows malicious authors to chill public comment on their work through timewasting with meritless accusations of licence breaches. The net result is a loss for freedom of speech and no real gain for the protection of the reputation of the author.
It is better both for the author and for society to protect the right of reply with a copyleft licence or an expanded fair use licence than to try to suppress it with a restrictive licence. The social, legal and licencing effects are already stronger and more subtle than a restrictive licence, and such a licence cannot protect against misrepresentation any more than society, the law, and existing copyleft licences already do anyway.
It is not however clear that restrictive licences do more good than harm as a means to this end. There are already social and legal measures in place to prevent the misrepresentation of works. And restrictive licences harm the ability both to propagate and critique the works.
Socially there are strong social norms against plagiarism, falsification of results or quotes, misattribution of works and opinions, or misrepresentation of views or data. There is also an expectation of a right of reply and a right to corrections to breaches of these norms in most media. These rights may be enforced by industry bodies or by government agencies.
Legally there are laws against passing off of goods, laws preventing misattribution under the moral right of Paternity, laws against the mistreatment of works under the moral right of Integrity, laws against libel or slander, and laws protecting "personality rights".
Within Free Software and Free Culture there are also licence requirements that protect against misattribution. Misattribution is arguably the core issue of misrepresentation of works. The GNU FDL and the CC licences require that derivative versions be clearly marked, and neither Debian nor The OSI regard this as a limit on freedom.
People and organizations do publish the results of breaking these norms, laws and licenses. Some do so illegally but there are also specific social and legal cases where this is allowed and even necessary.
Socially the practices of parody, satire, critique and debate all require use of the work that the author may not agree with. This use may involve quotation, wholesale use, transformative use or untransformed recontextualization.
Legally these social practices are encoded in exceptions to copyright such as Fair Use or Fair Dealing. Both the new GNU GPL 3 and the CC licences explicitly state their support for Fair Use. The GNU FDL should as well.
Using Fair Use and even minor rhetorical skill a malicious commentator can easily use context and selective quotation to argue that an author's position is the opposite of the one that they actually hold. Placing a work under a restrictive licence does not prevent this. It simply gives a false sense of security to the author. And it allows malicious authors to chill public comment on their work through timewasting with meritless accusations of licence breaches. The net result is a loss for freedom of speech and no real gain for the protection of the reputation of the author.
It is better both for the author and for society to protect the right of reply with a copyleft licence or an expanded fair use licence than to try to suppress it with a restrictive licence. The social, legal and licencing effects are already stronger and more subtle than a restrictive licence, and such a licence cannot protect against misrepresentation any more than society, the law, and existing copyleft licences already do anyway.
Technorati Tags: copyleft, creative commons, fair use, free culture, GPL, FDL
- How original do kids actually think mash-ups are?
- Jenny Holzer's collection of tactical maps from the liberation of Iraq.
- "So the first couple of weeks the wiki novel was plagued by porn, now it's plagued by silliness, especially of the banal banana variety."
- Get the episodes easily.
I've read and watched an awful lot of very bad werewolf stories over the years. I think the absolute worst was the episode of "Journey To The Bottom Of The Sea" where - actually it's so bad I'm not even going to tell you. But at least it didn't have the obsession with human squalor and misery that the likes of Alice Borchardt and S. P. Somtow inflict on page after page of for-the-love-of-god-get-on-with-it filler while failing to find anything to say or do with their characters.
I mention this only to plead that I am not entirely a drooling lycanthropy fanboy despite the fact that I am here to express how very wonderful I think Martin Millar's ("Lux & Alby", etc.) new novel "Lonely Werewolf Girl" is. Yes, that's the title. Yes, that's the cover. And, yes, the author does mention "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" as an inspiration in interviews. If these things appeal to you then great. If they don't, and they didn't to me, don't let them put you off. It's brilliant.
You can read a sample here.
I mention this only to plead that I am not entirely a drooling lycanthropy fanboy despite the fact that I am here to express how very wonderful I think Martin Millar's ("Lux & Alby", etc.) new novel "Lonely Werewolf Girl" is. Yes, that's the title. Yes, that's the cover. And, yes, the author does mention "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" as an inspiration in interviews. If these things appeal to you then great. If they don't, and they didn't to me, don't let them put you off. It's brilliant.
You can read a sample here.
Technorati Tags: review, werewolves
- "Heya, here are my slides from OSCON called Refining Copyright with CC"
- Elisp code to insert DEFCLASS forms into the buffer. Muy kewl.
- "Several months ago, I bought an episode of Star Trek on Google Video, just out of curiosity to see how it worked. Today I got an email letting me know my videos would stop working in five days."
YouTube - Where are the Joneses? 64: Super Breath
Dawn is on an all-out charm offensive
This is brilliant for two reasons.
Firstly, this must be how gaming looks to non-gamers.
Secondly, this is how non-gamers look to gamers when they try to join in.
It's a full spectrum parody. ;-)
Dawn is on an all-out charm offensive
This is brilliant for two reasons.
Firstly, this must be how gaming looks to non-gamers.
Secondly, this is how non-gamers look to gamers when they try to join in.
It's a full spectrum parody. ;-)
Cover by ROMAN DIRGE. Story by ROMAN DIRGE.
Interior art by mistake. It looks like someone has just discovered the airbrush tool in Photoshop. "Hey! Let's smear indistinct greys around with no regard for light sources, shapes, textures or different brush sizes!" It is embarrassingly bad art. No, it's not atmospheric. Not unless the atmosphere smells strongly of methane.
But the cover and pre-order sheets say ROMAN DIRGE. Not REMEDIAL PHOTOSHOP AIRBRUSH STUDENT. ROMAN DIRGE.
So it'll sell a few copies and piss a lot of people off. Including any comic shop owners who feel they've been mis-sold the damn thing when it turns up in this week's orders.
If this was a media blog I'd now produce some profound insight into how this is an example of how not to squander the relational capital that artists build up with their audience. But it isn't, so I won't.
Interior art by mistake. It looks like someone has just discovered the airbrush tool in Photoshop. "Hey! Let's smear indistinct greys around with no regard for light sources, shapes, textures or different brush sizes!" It is embarrassingly bad art. No, it's not atmospheric. Not unless the atmosphere smells strongly of methane.
But the cover and pre-order sheets say ROMAN DIRGE. Not REMEDIAL PHOTOSHOP AIRBRUSH STUDENT. ROMAN DIRGE.
So it'll sell a few copies and piss a lot of people off. Including any comic shop owners who feel they've been mis-sold the damn thing when it turns up in this week's orders.
If this was a media blog I'd now produce some profound insight into how this is an example of how not to squander the relational capital that artists build up with their audience. But it isn't, so I won't.
Technorati Tags: comics, review
- "A report from Gartner Inc. warns against companies getting involved with virtual worlds, in order to protect their brands."
- "The legal issues were broad ranging and establishing the right commercial framework to offer this content on a creative commons basis necessitated a wholesale review of the rights structures in all the commercial agreements."
- "Shutting down Napster was a huge blunder for the record companies, leading to the collapse of the entire industry. Now, movies and TV studios are looking to repeat the failure by going after YouTube"
- "Becky Hogge from the Open Rights Group with with Ian Forester hosting the discussion, about a BBC archive of films and clips with metadata available to the public of video assets"
- "The Nintendo DS homebrew scene is continuously growing while more and useful applications appear. Today we will have a look on two interesting drawing applications. Both follow the approach of "digital paintings"."
- "I've uploaded all of the notes for all of talks I've given calling for a free culture movement built around a standard of freedom and for adoption of the Definition of Free Cultural Works."
- "LiveCDs are equivalent to what is called a LiveDistro. "
- "One particular licensing option, however, is a growing problem for the free culture community. It is the allow non-commercial use only (-NC) option."
What do people think of this new blog theme?
I just want a nice clean typographic/whitespace theme with widget support and no default NC-SA licence attached. This is the best one I've found so far.
What do you mean you're reading the RSS feed? ;-)
I just want a nice clean typographic/whitespace theme with widget support and no default NC-SA licence attached. This is the best one I've found so far.
What do you mean you're reading the RSS feed? ;-)
- The number of XSS vulnerabilities being found adds weight to Eben Moglen's critique of Web 2.0 that Tim O'Reilly (free software advocate, publisher of proprietary books and owner of the Web 2.0 trademark) found so unpalatable.
- "After a near 10-year gap in which only reprints of the Traveller game system have been available, Mongoose Publishing becomes the centralised resource for Traveller titles with the publication of their core rule book Traveller: Science-Fiction Adventures
- "This web site is copyright © Mongoose Publishing 2003. All rights reserved. Reproduction of non-Open Game Content of this work by any means without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden." What about Fair Use and Fair Dealing, Mo
- "Rob and Crosbie have been kicking off about the idea and use of Gift Economy in the comments section here - which has led to the idea of some lovely GPLv3 wrapping paper"
minara uses a few small but very useful utility functions from the ttn-pers-scheme project, which seems to be GPL 2 only with no timescale set for upgrading to GPL 3.
I'll email the author to ask if the next release will be GPL 3. If so, I will hold off on making minara GPL 3 until then. If not, I will re-implement the functions. I know that's not very "clean room", but hopefully it will be OK.
I'm not meant to be doing any more work on minara but I really would like to fix the outstanding bugs and do a 0.0.1a release at some point.
I'll email the author to ask if the next release will be GPL 3. If so, I will hold off on making minara GPL 3 until then. If not, I will re-implement the functions. I know that's not very "clean room", but hopefully it will be OK.
I'm not meant to be doing any more work on minara but I really would like to fix the outstanding bugs and do a 0.0.1a release at some point.
Technorati Tags: free software, minara
Here are my current plans for draw-something. They are subject to change.
1. Relicence as GPL 3. Done.
2. Ensure that colouring code works properly.
- Check that it matches Cohen's description.
- Do this in chordinator?
3. Tune up "Interesting Points" system.
- Make 100 images and try to code away unpleasant features.
4. Finish basic simple & large -> complex & small figure plane system.
5. Move to more complex "figures & developments" system.
6. More figure types.
- Currently there are polylines, polygons and hulls.
- Add points, circles, arcs, linesets, circlesets.
7. Switch to integer maths or at least whole-pixel offsets.
- Error based line drawing?
9. Relational groups.
- Literal mirror, scale, rotate of core skeleton.
- Conceptual groups e.g. "5 points", "all same size/area".
10. Tagging scheme.
- Tag interesting points to get clusters, relations.
- Tag each development to guide later developments.
- Basic implimenteation e.g. plist of symbols.
A. Solve presentation problem.
- Do it like current AARON or like Copycat, drawing screen & log screen.
- Ltk seems best bet.
- Dump drawing and commentary as event log to (e.g.) Java based player.
B. Make sketch program & development program & colour program?
- UNIX pipeline.
- Make each component simpler.
- Like Kazushi's systems.
C. Representational imagery?
D. Pixmap/crop-based system or faster vector-based hit testing? (See 7.)
E. Stop using CVS? Just release tarballs?
1. Relicence as GPL 3. Done.
2. Ensure that colouring code works properly.
- Check that it matches Cohen's description.
- Do this in chordinator?
3. Tune up "Interesting Points" system.
- Make 100 images and try to code away unpleasant features.
4. Finish basic simple & large -> complex & small figure plane system.
5. Move to more complex "figures & developments" system.
6. More figure types.
- Currently there are polylines, polygons and hulls.
- Add points, circles, arcs, linesets, circlesets.
7. Switch to integer maths or at least whole-pixel offsets.
- Error based line drawing?
9. Relational groups.
- Literal mirror, scale, rotate of core skeleton.
- Conceptual groups e.g. "5 points", "all same size/area".
10. Tagging scheme.
- Tag interesting points to get clusters, relations.
- Tag each development to guide later developments.
- Basic implimenteation e.g. plist of symbols.
A. Solve presentation problem.
- Do it like current AARON or like Copycat, drawing screen & log screen.
- Ltk seems best bet.
- Dump drawing and commentary as event log to (e.g.) Java based player.
B. Make sketch program & development program & colour program?
- UNIX pipeline.
- Make each component simpler.
- Like Kazushi's systems.
C. Representational imagery?
D. Pixmap/crop-based system or faster vector-based hit testing? (See 7.)
E. Stop using CVS? Just release tarballs?
Technorati Tags: generative art
rob-art (including draw-something) is now GPL 3 licenced in SourceForge CVS.
draw-somethng-carbon has been removed due to bitrot and also because I cannot work out how the LLGPL interacts with the GPL. The old version is still available in the older release tarballs, and may even work. ;-)
draw-somethng-carbon has been removed due to bitrot and also because I cannot work out how the LLGPL interacts with the GPL. The old version is still available in the older release tarballs, and may even work. ;-)
Technorati Tags: free software, generative art
Get the GPL 3 licenced version of paintr 0.2 from here:
http://paintr.robmyers.org/paintr_0.2_GPL3.zip
rob-art (including draw-something) and minara will follow assuming that there are no problems with any of the libraries I have used. In particular I will probably have to retire the Carbon version of draw-something (which has severe bitrot anyway).
http://paintr.robmyers.org/paintr_0.2_GPL3.zip
rob-art (including draw-something) and minara will follow assuming that there are no problems with any of the libraries I have used. In particular I will probably have to retire the Carbon version of draw-something (which has severe bitrot anyway).
Technorati Tags: free software
