Cory Doctorow:
Earlier this month, a group of copyfighters circulated a
manifesto/petition for increased openness, transparency and balance at
the meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is
currently chasing in the other direction by pulling stunts like excluding
nearly every public interest group from its meetings. The petition
has been delivered to WIPO now, with impressive stats:
1. More than 750 signatures
2. From 53 countries:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon,
Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Rep., Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Israel, Japan, Kenya,
Lithuania, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Poland, Portugal,
Romania, Russia, Saint Lucia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South
Korea, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK, Ukraine,
Uruguay, USA, Venezuela.
3. From all 5 continents:
Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, Oceania.
4. Non exhaustive list of signatories' areas of interest:
advertising, agriculture, anthropology, arts (visual / musical /
film / entertainment), banking, bioinfomatics, chemistry, computer
security / privacy / engineer / science, culture, education, health,
human rights, information studies, intellectual property, journalism,
law, library, mathematics, medicine, patent owner, philosophy,
physics, politics, sociology, song writing, technology, video game
industry, web development.
The link has versions of the petition in Russian, English, Spanish and
Portuguese,
Link
More from EFF.
You can also add your name to a petition.
Balance & Balance Sheets
Balance & Balance Sheets05/17/2004 05:57 AM By now most of the world (outside of the occasional football coach)
knows that a woman-friendly workplace is good business. But while many
big companies have all sorts of programs to retain and promote women,
one obscure accounting firm has been particularly successful at doing
so. So what do they know?
PNG files would make transparency effects a snap,
except for one tiny little quirk: support for the format is great in
every browser but one. Unless, of course, you resort to using some of
the hacks and workarounds now available.
More transparency please
More transparency please07/09/2004 08:26 AM Shelley wonders how many of the bloggers credentialed are women. Good
question. How many women applied? Did the credentialers notice or
care? And was political position one of the considerations? And
where's the list of those who got credentialed? We really need more
transparency from the folks who did the credentialing......
Recognizing openness
Recognizing openness07/19/2004 04:58 PM Michael O'Connell: I sense that Microsoft has been rather concerned
about Linux lately. Why else would their top dog, CEO Steve Ballmer,
get
so riled up when asked this week ...
In a Ne
w York Times article today about AOL's future, one of its
excutives makes a remarkable comment:
"My biggest problem is the walled garden," said Mr. Kelly, who runs
all of AOL's Web properties in addition to ad sales. "The world can't
see the good stuff we do every day."
This is AOL, the company that virtually defined the model of keeping
information off the public Internet and available only to its
subscribers. It now realizes, at least to some extent, the positive
network effects of openness, which companies such as Google and Yahoo!
are tapping into.
Now, if only the broadband and wireless companies who are rushing
to build new walled gardens could get the same message....
JD Lasica (Online Journalism Review): Transparency
Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere. The openness of
Weblogs could help explain why many readers find them more credible
than traditional media. Can mainstream journalists learn from their
cutting-edge cousins?
FC Now: Creative Transparency
FC Now: Creative Transparency04/05/2005 06:49 AM Last night, I watched the Japanese film "All About Lily
Chou-Chou." It is a brutal tale about 14 year olds in Japan. More
astonishing is that before the film was made, the director/writer
Shunji Iwai started it as an online...
A service called ProfNet
lets journalists send a blind e-mail query to battalions of professors
and other self-defined experts on various topics. I've used it
occasionally to find sources for columns and stories.
Now a columnist for a Pittsburgh newspaper (owned by one of the right
wing's major financiers) has begun posting reporters' queries,
with the apparent aim of showing left-wing bias in the first example.
He doesn't make his case, but that's not the issue I'm considering
here.
What's interesting is the question of journalistic transparency. We're
a black box, but its workings just got revealed, in a small way.
Journalists will go nuts over this, but I think we'd better get used
it. Turning the tables on our interviewing is not a new phenomenon,
though it's disconcerting for a reporter to discover that the topic of
his or her unwritten story is now public information.
Jonathan Krim, in a comment below the posting, notes that ProfNet will
either strengthen its cloaking of journalists' names or see the
service fold. It would be a shame to see it fold, because it does have
some good uses.
Apple Delivered
Apple Delivered01/22/2004 02:09 AM Dell may have the hype and PR. But Apple delivered. By Michael Sidoric
(CNET News.com via MyAppleMenu)
Transparency in Government
Transparency in Government06/09/2004 05:45 PM The U.S. is in thrall to invisible government agents who shrink,
levitate, and control minds, warns Alan Yu. "I am an expert on these
tiny invisible personnel's tactics, technology, weapons and
illness/death inducing techniques."
More on PingBack and Transparency
More on PingBack and Transparency03/13/2003 10:21 AM I've been thinking more about the issues of transparency mentioned in
my previous post. As I said before, I think...
WIPO maintains an automated system
which allows users to subscribe to e-mail notification of news and
updates on WIPO's activities, services, events, publications and
discussion groups. Specific lists are maintained for various areas of
interest, with information on available language versions as well as
the approximate frequency of notifications.
Openness law reveals papers01/03/2005 10:27 PM Some 50,000 files from the past 30 years are made public on the first
working day of the Freedom of Information Act.
Sony stumbles toward openness
Sony stumbles toward openness09/24/2004 01:43 PM Just because a technology provider declares itself to be open, doesn't
make it so. Take, for instance, Sony. One Web site it runs,
http://www.openmginfo.com, touts: "a platform technology that delivers
seamless connection across a broad range that covers online content...
.... a short article asking reviewers of hardware devices
to add a score to their reviews: the openness factor. For instance,
when I buy this mp3 player, what will it let me do, and how am I
restricted? I've come up with a simple 4-point scale of openness from
crippled products that subvert standards to lock you in (remember
DivX?), to complete freedom (palmOS or modern hardware).
Electronic Voting and Transparency02/10/2004 02:51 AM (I have shifted from Impressionistic Transcription to other modes,
need to listen and learn. Phil Windley, blogger and former CIO of the
great State of Utah. Adina Levin, Socialtext rock star by day, freedom
fighter by night. Bill Stotesbury, Representative...
Gmail delivered to desktops
Gmail delivered to desktops08/20/2004 02:08 PM Google releases a test version of software to deliver desktop alerts
when new e-mail arrives.
Mail Delivered After Nearly Two Decades (AP)06/08/2004 08:14 PM AP - Trisha Collins-Lavigne waited 19 years to see Nina Roxanne's
plastic face again. The Cabbage Patch Kids doll, which arrived at her
home recently, was mailed to her almost two decades ago, after she
left it on a tour bus in London.
Transparency 0.1.82 (Default branch)06/24/2005 07:17 PM
Transparency is a small, specialized tool for
transparent PNG processing on the command line. It
focuses on typical tasks for Web design. In the
spirit of ImageMagick, it provides special
extensions such as conversion of white to
transparency, and the preparation of transparent
PNGs for perfect GIF export (i.e., "partial"
application of the alpha channel).
WIPO has crazy toilets
WIPO has crazy toilets11/05/2003 02:28 PM I'm in Geneva, representing EFF at the World Intellectual Property
Organization meeting on the unbelie
vably misbegotten Broadcast Treaty, an Orwellian masterwork that
makes the DMCA look like junior-high playground strong-arming.
The high point (other than working with the amazing coalition of
activists that Jamie Love and the Civil Society Coalition have
gathered here) was the utterly bizarre self-papering toilets in the
WIPO building. I was so taken by these things that I had to shoot a
movie -- I knew I could never describe them adequately with words
alone.
675k AVI Link
In Some Cases, Openness May Be Moot Issue
In Some Cases, Openness May Be Moot Issue11/10/2003 11:26 PM Wherever the future takes us, one thing is certain: When it comes to
digital content, there's no such thing as an open-and-shut case. By
Paul Andrews (Seattle Times via MyAppleMenu)
Flash 'has to learn' about openness
Flash 'has to learn' about openness04/08/2005 12:26 PM Copyright reformer Lawrence Lessig gave Flash developers an earful on
Wednesday about how their platform of choice is perceived in the free
software world. "Flash is the enemy," said Lessig, a Stanford
University professor and board member of the Free Software Foundation,
as he described the opinions of leading free- and open-source-software
advocates. "[These advocates] hate Flash. They think that by
participating in the Flash community, you are feeding the devil."
Michael Powell on Internet openness02/10/2004 09:20 AM FCC Chairman Powell challenged broadband platform providers to ensure
"Internet freedom" in a speech yesterday
at the University of Colorado.
Powell didn't advocate FCC action
to ensure broadband openness, but he made it clear that he took the
threat of closed networks seriously. This is important. If
there is consensus that the cableization of the Net is a real
possibility that would have terrible business and public interest
consequences, we're making progress. Then we can fight over
whether, in fact, that scenario is materializing.
Drug research openness promised
Drug research openness promised01/06/2005 09:46 AM
The world's leading drug companies have promised to publish more data
about clinical trials into new medicines to reassure the public about
their safety.
Toggle terminal transparency via AppleScript08/13/2004 10:41 AM Sure you can make the Terminal transparent by clicking command+i
followed by clicking color, then moving the slider until the Terminal
window is transparent ... but have you ever thought, hmmm, I wish that
I could toggle the ...
Revived Zeppelin Delivered to First User06/12/2004 05:11 PM San Jose Mercury News Jun 12 2004 9:00PM GMT Grok Description matches for Openness/transparency/balance manifesto delivered to WIPO GrokA matches for Openness/transparency/balance manifesto delivered to WIPO
Openness/transparency/balance manifesto delivered to WIPO
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
Transparency is a small, specialized tool for
transparent PNG processing on the command line. It
focuses on typical tasks for Web design. In the
spirit of ImageMagick, it provides special
extensions such as conversion of white to
transparency, and the preparation of transparent
PNGs for perfect GIF export (i.e., "partial"
application of the alpha channel).