Free Culture in 100 words

Grok Headline matches for Free Culture in 100 words

Free Culture!

Free Culture! 10/28/2003 11:07 PM

I helped put together the new Creative Commons CD featuring all sorts of great licensed music, and it's all available for download.

Now that the pool of CC-licensed music has grown, we had a great deal of choices and as a result there are all sorts of songs in the mix. I've been listening to these songs for months and it's hard to pick favorites, they've all got some strengths. Don't miss the bonus remixes too, the creativity there was amazing.

Free Culture

Free Culture 04/09/2004 04:11 PM

Free Culture formats

Free Culture formats 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
The free Free Culture was released as a pdf under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. Some complained about the format. Others, relying upon the freedom granted, created derivative works in other formats. So far, 36 hours after the book was released, I know of 9 versions available, including: MS-re ader, Rocke t e-Book, zippe d, iSilo , Mobip ocket, EasyR ead, PostScri pt, Pl ain Text, html. Most of these are from Blackmask, but thanks to Firas, Mike and Josh as well.

Free Culture On Tour

Free Culture On Tour 03/19/2005 03:27 AM

Free Culture may be visiting a college, youth media group, or festival near you. Brooklyn-based artist Colin Mutchler, in partnership with FreeCulture.org, has launched a five-week tour which kicked off last week at South by Southwest.

The Free Culture show mixes music, images, and spoken word to demonstrate the complex and entertaining cross section between cultural property and freedom. Check it out!

Free Culture class

Free Culture class 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
Lawrence Solum (who has entered an elite status after Vint Cerf gave a paper praising his Layer s Principle paper) is running a blog-class this week on Free Culture. Follow along (as I will be) and learn.

Free Culture live

Free Culture live 09/10/2004 04:26 PM

Colin Mutchler, featured in our second Creative Commons movie "Reticulum Rex", is giving a live performance of his audio/visual work called "Free Culture" September 15th in Brooklyn, NY.

"Sourced by Larry Lessig and his new book of the same name, Free Culture is multimedia performance by Brooklyn based artist Colin Mutchler that mixes music, image, video and spoken word to speak his personal journey, both physically and digitally, through the last four years. "

The Free Culture debate

The Free Culture debate 02/11/2004 09:39 AM
James DeLong responds to my post about the Free Culture Movement (FCM) and property rights.  He steps back from his earlier statements and acknowledges that, yes, there are elements of the movement, such as Creative Commons, that work within the property rights system.  For that I give him credit. 

I don't agree with his stark division of the FCM into "BSD Licence" activities that respect property rights and "GPL" activities that seek to overthrow them, but I won't be ungrateful.  It's a much more nuanced and accurate view that what he started with.  If we can spend our energy debating the substance of the issues -- which sets of rules better promote economic efficiency, freedom, and innovation -- we may make some progress.

To my mind, the genius of people like Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler is that, unlike the prior "copyleft" generation represented by GPL creator Richard Stallman, they are able to engage on their opponents' own turf as well as from the outside.  What set me off about DeLong's original post was the unwillingness to accept that fact, by labeling the whole movement as opposed to property rights.

DeLong takes umbrage at my use of the term "copyright maximalists."  First of all, I didn't apply that label to him -- I was thinking more of Jack Valenti. As DeLong makes clear in his followup post, he appreciates that property rights have limits:


Unfortunately, many of the business and political interests in the digital content debates fail to acknowledge this point.  The movie industry, for example, has voiciferously promoted its conception of its intellectual property rights as morally sacrosanct, now and forever.  One key rhetorical move they make in doing so is to label anyone who questions their viewpoint as a communist and/or a pirate.  (I'm not sure which is the greater insult.)  You either support the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act... or you're in the dustbin of history with Lenin and Trotsky.  In a political battle, demonizing the opposition can be very effective. 

I'm sure this wasn't what motivated DeLong's original post.  But to a reader, his sweeping generalization had that ring. 

De Long succinctly (if inadvertantly) shows the core problem:


I see a similar problem on the other side: property rights defenders reflexively attacking alternative production models and technology-necessitated limitations on rights.  Does that describe all opponents of the FCM?  Of course not.  But the thoughtful ones such as DeLong are letting themselves become intellectual cover for the extremists.

That's why this meta-debate matters.  In the confines of the academy, we all trust each other's intellectual honesty and can have a nice conversation.  DeLong points to Polk Wagner, who has done excellent work attacking the point of view that I support.  I see Polk once a month at a Philly-area gathering of cyberlaw afficionados.  We find common ground on some substantive points and disagree on others, but I always respect his perspective.  In my forthcoming spectrum paper, I engage with other brilliant scholars like Howard Shelanski and Stuart Benjamin who have written in the area.  That's the nature of intellectual debate -- different sides advance claims and challenge one another. 

The cold reality is that the Free Culture battle isn't just being fought in the halls of academe.  The scholarly discussion is part of a larger debate taking place in Congress, the courts, corporate board rooms, and the realm of public opinion.  We simply can't ignore the consequences of labeling opponents with too broad brush. 

Wiki for Free Culture

Wiki for Free Culture 07/12/2004 08:59 AM
Creative Commons is experimenting with using a wiki to discuss using a wiki to maintain a Wikipedia of sorts for Free Culture. Drop by and give us your thoughts....

Free Culture at ILAW

Free Culture at ILAW 05/14/2004 03:12 PM

Chairman and co-founder of Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, spent most of this week speaking at the ILAW conference at Harvard. There are some great notes and transcripts on Furdlog and Copyfight of Lessig's "Free Culture" talk. There are a lot of great questions from the moderator and audience, and a lot of great ideas being debated.

Free Culture spoken

Free Culture spoken 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
This has amazed even me. AKMA asked whether a free audio version of Free Culture can be built. Joi seconded the idea, and one day later, ten chapters are claimed. Doug Kaye of ITConversations has already recorded chapter one -- Creators. Noncommercial derivative works, and maybe even a competition in versions (I want to record a chapter!). Very cool.

Free Culture reviews

Free Culture reviews 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
Reviews for Free Culture are here, with comment space and an RSS feed too.

A Wikipedia of Free Culture?

A Wikipedia of Free Culture? 07/02/2004 03:32 AM

Q: How to plan a wiki?
A: Hash out ideas on a wiki.

So we set up a wiki and we're holding a barn raising there. You're invited.

Our objective is to plan a "Get Content" wiki, a scalable catalog of "some rights reserved" and "no rights reserved" works.

A truly international catalog of CC and PD works. A Wikipedia of Free Culture, democratically maintained and curated.

Can this work? We have a hunch that it can, but we've doubtless missed many solutions and innumerable problems.

What we have thought of is of course on the wiki, where you should go without further adieu and add your ideas.

Note for anyone excited about the idea: we're planning at this stage. The wiki we're using for the planning may not be the one we use to implement the "Get Content" wiki (do help us figure that one out) -- so you may wish to curb your enthusiasm for raw cataloging just right now.

Now dive in!

Something for Nothing: The Free Culture
AudioBook Project

Something for Nothing: The Free Culture
AudioBook Project 05/25/2004 02:43 PM

chocnvodka.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2004/5/24/75489.html
track this site | 4 links

Help make a Wikipedia of Free Culture

Help make a Wikipedia of Free Culture 07/09/2004 05:19 AM
Creative Commons is creating a "Wikipedia of Free Culture" with links and annotation for every bit of open-licensed material in the universe. You're invited to help. Link

Woody Guthrie free culture

Woody Guthrie free culture 04/09/2004 03:54 PM

Joel Blain recently wrote in with an interesting observation:

"I've been reading a bio on Woody Guthrie. It's pretty interesting. The book reprints one of the "Copyright Warnings" he included on his recordings in the ealry 40's

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

It just made me think of Creative Commons. I dunno if you've seen or heard it before, but I thought I'd pass it along."

Nice find, thanks Joel!

Free Culture and Property Rights

Free Culture and Property Rights 02/10/2004 02:47 AM
Over at the Progress and Freedom Foundation blog, James DeLong attempts to prove that the "Free Culture Movement" (FCM) led by people like Larry Lessig is part and parcel of the political left:

This is a nice case of simply asserting what the author is allegedly attempting to prove.  In fact, Free Culture is eminently consistent with markets and property rights.  Lessig's Creative Commons and successful open source projects are based on well-defined software licenses.  In other words, property rights that function in a market.  The network infrastructure piece of Free Culture, open spectrum is expressly built on the idea of a market in wireless devices replacing a system of government spectrum micro-management.  And it was the Framers of the US Constitution, hardly anti-property radicals, who decreed that copyrights be for a limited period of time. 

The property rights maximalists are the true radicals here.  They have defined any challenges to the status quo as a frontal attack on property rights.  As political propaganda, this effort may have some success.  But the ultimate strength of the Free Culture Movement, or whatever one calls it, lies in this: It is an internal critique of the dominant ideology, not an external challenge to markets like communism. 

The Free Culture proponents, who offer suggestions like returning to the copyright terms of the 1790s, are the true conservatives in this debate.

free culture source material

free culture source material 06/12/2004 04:34 AM
TheBots have released an archive of George Bush Audio.

Free Culture Phase 2 Conference

Free Culture Phase 2 Conference 06/17/2005 05:02 PM

A little late on the blogging (due to travel), but still worth reporting on:

A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to attend the Free Culture Phase 2 conference. The conference was organized by Malkia Lydia and Colin Mutchler (father of Creative Commons' theme song My Life and Free Culture Tour), and sponsored by American University. It brought together a small number of diverse younger and older activists, including Freeculture.org, Downhill Battle, Listen Up, Third World Majority, Eyebeam, and many more. The diverse group struggled to understand what free culture truly means in the context of global economics, access to technology, and traditional knowledge. The group also shared ideas, art, and experiences using new media as a tool for social justice. Though it wasn't clearly defined what Phase 2 might be, it was understood to me that the root of what everyone was doing came from a common passion for citizen self-determination and empowerment.

Free Culture Wiki: Piracy Hits a New Low

Free Culture Wiki: Piracy Hits a New Low 04/09/2004 04:10 PM
In the latest example of blatant intellectual property abuse, self-proclaimed ?hacker? Aaron Swartz has uploaded the entirety of the bestselling?

Streaming AudioBook of Lessig's "Free
Culture"

Streaming AudioBook of Lessig's "Free
Culture" 04/09/2004 03:59 PM
Streaming AudioBook of Lessig's "Free Culture"
http://www.turnstyle.org/ FreeCulture/

On Thursday, March 25, 2004; Lawrence Lessig's new book "Free Culture" was released to the world as a printed hardcover as well as a free download, under a Creative Commons license. On Friday, A. K. M. Adam asked a simple question: "Anyone feel like recording a chapter of Lawrence Lessig's new book?" By Saturday, contributions were coming in from around the world. Inspired by Eric Rice, Scott Matthews whipped up this site with his MP3 juke/server software, Andromeda.

An extremely beautiful Free Culture
eBook

An extremely beautiful Free Culture
eBook 04/09/2004 04:06 PM
There is an extremely beautiful ebook version of Free Culture here. I continue to be astonished at the creativity free culture (the idea, not the book) inspires.

Lessig's Free Culture Chinese fan-trans

Lessig's Free Culture Chinese fan-trans 04/10/2004 03:46 AM
Kevin sez, "Some Chinese bloggers have recently launed a collabrative transaltion project to translate Lessig's Free Culture into Chinese, Create a Wiki page in SocialBrain. So far, 21 people have joined this collaborative project, memes appeared in lots of blogs. 12 chapters were assigned by contributors to translate." Link (Thanks, Kevin!)

Freely downloadable Free Culture going
into third printing

Freely downloadable Free Culture going
into third printing 07/27/2004 05:50 PM

CC Weblog

Lessig's free book still racking in the sales

Stanford Magazine carries a story this month about our chairman and co-founder Lawrence Lessig's book which has just entered its third printing. This is interesting because the book is freely available online for download (under a Creative Commons license), and has been downloaded about 180,000 times. On the one hand an author can give away free content for folks to remake into audio books, translations, and other formats, and the author still gets paid through traditional book sales. Amazing how that works, and works so well sometimes. [via Copyfight]

It will be very difficult to "prove" that the Creative Common license and the freely downloadable aspect of Free Culture improved sales, but the book is selling and making it freely available has clearly not STOPPED sales. I wonder if it is possible to show that making books available for free electronically increases the sale of real books? I wonder if there are particular genres where this holds more true...

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Debates about global issues, politics
and culture set "CC-free"

Debates about global issues, politics
and culture set "CC-free" 06/17/2005 05:02 PM

In recent news - openDemocracy.net has announced that it is releasing around 150 of its existing articles under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and will also be incorporating the option of Creative Commons licensing for all future contributors.

openDemocracy is an online magazine that provides a forum in which global issues relating to politics and culture are debated, many of which do not receive sufficient or sufficiently careful attention by the mainstream media. A brief review of openDemocracy's au thor pages shows that recent authors have included Kofi Annan, Timothy Garton Ash, Janis Ian, Iris Marion Young, Salman Rushdie, George Soros, Richard Stallman and Gillian Slovo.

It is great to have such a high caliber publication committed to the principles of spreading ideas around the globe and adopting a Creative Commons to fulfill that objective. You can read more about their decision to switch and why Salman Rushdie said no to a Creative Commons license in our recent Featured Commoner segment.

Del audiobook de "Free Culture" al
audiolibro de "Cultura Libre"

Del audiobook de "Free Culture" al
audiolibro de "Cultura Libre" 09/01/2004 05:45 PM

Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates =
Commies

Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates =
Commies 01/06/2005 12:07 AM
Xeni Jardin: I imagine my blog-mate Cory might have a few things to say about this when he's online again. :-) In an interview on news.com, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described free culture advocates as a "modern-day sort of communists." Well now.

Q: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: "No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future."

Link (Thanks, Rick Prelinger, and Nathan Slaughter).

BB reader Matt Bradley said, "Obviously, what we need is a large red flag with a gold copyleft in the upper left, replacing the hammer and sickle."

That sounded like a fine idea, so I whipped up the icon you see here. Enjoy, comrades!

Happy Birthday, Free Culture Movement
(finally)

Happy Birthday, Free Culture Movement
(finally) 06/22/2005 02:31 AM
So as reported about two months ago, the Free Culture Movement turned one in April. I promised a present. At the time, we were organizing a call in recording of "Happy Birthday," from some of the leaders of the free world. Well, finally, after some struggle clearing rights, and after lots of nitpicking on my part, we've released the song. Check out the @page at Creative Commons, donate something in support, and download the song. Sorry for the delay.

Video of Lessig Free Culture speech in
Helsinki

Video of Lessig Free Culture speech in
Helsinki 07/27/2004 02:35 PM

There a small, but well produced mp4 video of Lessig's speech about Free Culture and the Creative Commons that he gave when he was in Helsinki this May.

Thanks to Jyri at Aula for the link and for organizing the event.

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UMaine launches free
culture/code/knowledge service

UMaine launches free
culture/code/knowledge service 12/16/2003 11:12 AM
The University of Maine has launched "Still Water," a copyright-free zone for posting and sharing images, music, videos, programming code and texts.

"We are training revolutionaries -- not by indoctrinating them with dogma but by exposing them to a process in which sharing culture rather than hoarding it is the norm," said Joline Blais, a professor of new media at the University of Maine and Still Water co-director.

Link

Bill Gates calls free culture advocates
communists

Bill Gates calls free culture advocates
communists 01/07/2005 12:01 AM

Xeni @ Boing Boing

Bill Gates: Free Culture advocates = Commies

In an interview on news.com, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates described free culture advocates as a "modern-day sort of communists." Well now.

Q: "In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, 'We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights.' What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

A: "No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

Lessig Blog

what a total (intellectual) disappointment this man is

If I had the time, and the money, I'd do the deep analysis that it would take to explain to myself why it is I constantly hope to be surprised by Mr. Gates. Yet I never am.

It's one thing to read this sort of thing from a studio exec, or head of a record label -- surrounded as they are by the sort that surround them. But the people I've met at Microsoft are miles beyond this sort of silliness. Does Mr. Gates not even talk to them?

More Gates "Creative Commies" propaganda on Boing Boing.

I'd be interested to know why Larry expected to be positively surprised by Mr. Gates.

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Free Culture and the Future of Music,
Part 1: Ad Hominem, Ad Nauseum

Free Culture and the Future of Music,
Part 1: Ad Hominem, Ad Nauseum 05/04/2004 09:12 PM
How influential is the Free Culture Movement and the book that gives it its name? One way to judge is by measuring the ferocity of the opposition. Those who have pushed for copyright maximization over the past decade or so have been able to do so unfettered by inconveniences like...

Free Desktop Political Research Software
Appliance Unifies Information Access and
Measures the Coherence Between Words,
Phrases and Concepts

Free Desktop Political Research Software
Appliance Unifies Information Access and
Measures the Coherence Between Words,
Phrases and Concepts 07/31/2004 02:22 AM
The developers of Readware technology (a semantic software infrastructure) have produced a downloadable software appliance. The "PI" short for "Political Informant" is surely a "must have" device for every political junky, critic or political pundit. [PRWEB Jul 31, 2004]

Boing Boing: Bill Gates: Free Culture
advocates = Commies

Boing Boing: Bill Gates: Free Culture
advocates = Commies 01/06/2005 02:39 PM
yesterday's Boing Boing post .. posts more of Gates' quote, .. BoingBoing link

boingboing.net/2005/01/05/bill_gates_free_cult.html
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The Fight Between Sharing Culture And
Owning Culture

The Fight Between Sharing Culture And
Owning Culture 06/22/2005 02:17 AM
It seems that museums are finally starting to realize that the digital age represents a real opportunity for them to reach many new people by digitizing their offerings and sharing the culture they represent across a much wider audience than a physical museum allows. It seems that many museums are having trouble figuring out how to digitize their collections, and would welcome help in doing so. However, another story points out how that can cause problems when the people involved get stuck on intellectual property issues. Apparently some people who created 3D digital versions of Michelangelo's David are freaking out that if they share the digitization without some form of copy protection people might (gasp!) share it without permission. Wait a second... isn't that what they should want? That would allow them to share the cultural wonder with many, many more people, and allow them to experience it in ways never possible before. That's a good thing, not something to be worried about. However, in an age where people seem to think that every idea, concept, software or piece of data needs to be "owned" and locked up, apparently it's the natural response -- and that's unfortunate for every culture.

"Imagine living in a world without
words. Then imagine getting pregnant,
perhaps as a result of rape, giving
birth alone, being arrested - and not
having the words to explain, or to
understand what is happening."

"Imagine living in a world without
words. Then imagine getting pregnant,
perhaps as a result of rape, giving
birth alone, being arrested - and not
having the words to explain, or to
understand what is happening." 04/13/2004 03:29 AM

Show me a culture that despises
virginity and I'll show you a culture
that despises childhood

Show me a culture that despises
virginity and I'll show you a culture
that despises childhood 06/16/2004 06:37 AM
"Virginia Tells Men: No Sex with Young Girls" .. underage partners .. what the fuck? .. don't go there

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40804-2004Jun14.html
track this site | 7 links

Culture War.

Culture War. 09/17/2004 12:36 AM
Dan Hunter: Cultu re War. Now the next time someone calls you a dirty GNU/hippie, you can say "I'm a Marxist-Lessigist, dammit!"

Pop Culture

Pop Culture 09/08/2004 02:29 PM
Three years after its tragedy on September 11, Cantor Fitzgerald uses pop quizzes to make sure it's ready for any disaster it could face.

"Culture"

"Culture" 01/03/2004 07:07 PM

Grok Description matches for Free Culture in 100 words
GrokA matches for Free Culture in 100 words

Genomic Perl

Genomic Perl 03/13/2003 10:23 AM
After James Tisdall's "Beginning Perl for Bioinformaticists", has Rex Dwyer come up with a "Beginning Bioinformatics for Perl Programmers"? Simon Cozens reviews "Genomic Perl", with some anticipation...

Ebook Rebranding - The New Ebook
Marketing Power?

Ebook Rebranding - The New Ebook
Marketing Power? 05/24/2004 01:30 AM
WebDevInfo May 24 2004 5:50AM GMT

Perl Developer! - Market Leader! -
Perl,MySQL,Apache

Perl Developer! - Market Leader! -
Perl,MySQL,Apache 02/01/2005 09:51 PM
Alan Morris Recruitment - United Kingdom, London (2005-02-01)

Cultured Perl: Three Essential Perl
Books

Cultured Perl: Three Essential Perl
Books 05/19/2004 09:14 AM
KLB writes "In this article, the author reviews three Perl coding books, bringing you summaries of the key information contained in the books and how the new versions have been updated."

Perl/mod Perl developer, portgreSQL
experience

Perl/mod Perl developer, portgreSQL
experience 03/21/2003 12:28 PM
uptime systemlösungen gmbh - Austria, vienna (2003-03-21)

Perl/Mod Perl Web App. Developer/SW
Engineer

Perl/Mod Perl Web App. Developer/SW
Engineer 07/01/2004 08:45 PM
Ryan Recruiting - United States, CA, Laguna Hills (2004-07-01)

Cultured Perl: Fun with MP3 and Perl,
Part 1

Cultured Perl: Fun with MP3 and Perl,
Part 1 12/16/2003 12:24 PM
Ted writes "Every self-respecting computer and music fan needs to be able to manipulate MP3s -- the defacto standard for recreational digital music use. In ...

I need a perl tutor for perl on Windows
XP

I need a perl tutor for perl on Windows
XP 12/30/2004 11:35 PM
- United States, NJ, Hoboken (2004-12-30)

Perl Developer - OO Perl

Perl Developer - OO Perl 04/08/2005 05:47 PM
The Armada Group - CA, San Jose (2005-04-08)

Perl SQL Developer - perl 5 and DBI

Perl SQL Developer - perl 5 and DBI 09/14/2004 04:57 PM
Moss Search, LTD - United States, IL, Chicago (2004-09-14)

Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Era

Bioinformatics in the Post-Genomic Era 04/05/2005 05:00 PM

HP Supercomputer To Boost Genomic
Research

HP Supercomputer To Boost Genomic
Research 03/20/2003 01:05 PM
Researchers on a quest to map the human genome got a computational boost when Hewlett-Packard announced the installation of a $22 million supercomputer in one of the United Kingdom's preeminent genomic research facilities.

Allow genomic information to be freely
available on the internet

Allow genomic information to be freely
available on the internet 09/23/2004 07:29 PM
News-Medical.Net Sep 23 2004 10:34PM GMT

Genomic analysis tool improves
treatment?

Genomic analysis tool improves
treatment? 03/26/2005 05:40 AM
LabTechnologist.com Mar 26 2005 9:27AM GMT

Dr. Ryan and IP Holdings Form Ryogen LLC
to Commercialize Key Genomic Patents

Dr. Ryan and IP Holdings Form Ryogen LLC
to Commercialize Key Genomic Patents 04/07/2005 02:52 AM
IP Holdings LLC , an IP-centric idea incubator, announced today that it has formed a genomic start-up venture, Ryogen LLC, to commercialize a valuable IP portfolio developed by Dr. James W. Ryan. [PRWEB Apr 7, 2005]

New Consortium Will Develop Computer
Systems To Connect Genomic Data With
Disease

New Consortium Will Develop Computer
Systems To Connect Genomic Data With
Disease 04/13/2004 06:24 PM
Science Daily Apr 13 2004 11:12PM GMT

Just In Tokyo ebook

Just In Tokyo ebook 03/06/2004 01:53 AM

This week's featured content is the ebook Just In Tokyo. It's a offbeat guidebook to Tokyo written by web veteran Justin Hall and is now available for download under a Creative Commons license. First printed a few years go, it's now out of print and Justin is asking for voluntary donations if you like the downloadable book.

My new Entourage Ebook

My new Entourage Ebook 06/13/2004 07:57 PM
I'm pleased to announce the publication and availability for sale of my new ebook, Take Control of What's New in...

Vive la ebook!

Vive la ebook! 07/31/2004 05:02 PM
TechTree Jul 31 2004 8:40PM GMT

Deleting an Ebook

Deleting an Ebook 02/17/2004 06:32 PM

What Will It Take For eBook Adoption?

What Will It Take For eBook Adoption? 07/29/2004 10:24 AM

Did you know that the Frankfurt eBook

Did you know that the Frankfurt eBook 08/28/2004 02:47 PM
TechTree Aug 28 2004 5:39PM GMT

Would You Buy An eBook That Only Works
For A Few Days?

Would You Buy An eBook That Only Works
For A Few Days? 06/23/2004 12:25 PM
Here's yet another story about misplaced digital rights management technology. A review of the new Sony Libre says that it's a great new eBook reader with hellish DRM technology that makes it mostly useless. Because someone was so afraid about business model issues, rather than looking at what customers wanted, the Libre will only let you view an eBook that you bought for 60 days -- and then it gets locked up. The reviewer describes it as "a sad business model" and notes that he feels "sorry for this terrific little device... hamstrung as it is by misguided anti-piracy efforts." At what point do companies realize that DRM turns customers off and simply opens up opportunities for competitors? There's simply no customer demand for crippled products.

The AdSense Secrets eBook

The AdSense Secrets eBook 03/17/2005 03:40 AM
p style=color: redThis entry was brought to you by a href=http://go.lockergnome.com/527Google AdSense/a/p p There's an a href=http://go.lockergnome.com/527AdSense eBook/a out there that speaks the plain ol' truth, although its value is underestimated. I personally would have sold it for 10x as much, but that's because I know if you read it, you'll make 100x as much with a href=http://go.lockergnome.com/527AdSense/a as you are today. I've got a few more ideas I'm kicking around, including doing an AdSense afternoon seminar up here in Seattle. I'll keep you posted. Until then, read the eBook: /p blockquote p This is a real, recent screenshot of my a href=http://go.lockergnome.com/527AdSense stats page/a. With Google's permission, I'm able to reveal how much I'm making with AdSense. But they've asked me to keep details of my CPM and CTR private, so I have blacked them out in order to comply with Google's terms of service. I'm not a renegade and I value my relationship with Google too much! /p /blockquote p And if you haven't yet signed up for Google AdSense yet, get going - a href=http://go.lockergnome.com/529sign up for Google AdSense now/a. /p

Free Ebook For Your Website

Free Ebook For Your Website 03/14/2005 05:24 PM
Roger Lee is the author of three poetry books, Poems of Praise, Streams of Light and Christmas Poetry. The books are of the Christian genre, reflecting God's grace being manifested in nature. As well as, reflecting upon man's relationship with God. [PRWEB Mar 11, 2005]

eBook Information and Resources

eBook Information and Resources 05/27/2004 06:27 AM
eBook Information and Resources
http://12.108.175.91/ebookw eb/links

A comprehensive and constantly updated set of links and resources to eBook Information. This has been added to Reference Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

Ebook column that gets it all wrong

Ebook column that gets it all wrong 07/29/2004 02:52 AM
Gizmodo has a new column called "Feature Creep," and they kicked it off with an editorial about the future of ebooks that is striking for its complete disregard for the actual marketplace experiences with ebooks. It's full of hoary chestnuts about ebooks that have been emptily mouthed for 10 years ("Call it digital paper or electronic ink, it's the future of eBooks.") and aside from the occassional iPod comparison, there's hardly a paragraph in there that couldn't have been written in 1997 -- nor one that takes note of any of the events since then (well, to be fair, there's also a lot of puffery stuck in there to promote an ebook company called Vertical that probably didn't exist in 1997, but that's beside the point).

Take DRM. The author asserts on the one hand that DRM can work, and that it won't be so invasive that it turns customers (which the author insists on calling "consumers," an odious buzzword that invokes Gibson's description in Idoru, "...a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.") off.

This despite the actual marketplace fact that all DRM becomes invasive (ask any copyright policy maker in a country that allows parallel importing how he feels about the "lightweight" region-coding DRM on DVDs that reverses the laws he was elected to enact).

This despite the actual marketplace fact that DRM is generally broken within a few days of engagement with the public, often by teenagers, grad students, or people with ready acccess to sophisticated DRM-cracking tools like Google and the sinister Shift key (for more on DRM, see my DRM talk)

But the author goes further and asserts that without DRM, there will be no market for entertainment product ever again ("If publishers stop wanting DRM, it's the end of popular creative arts. Not as we know them, but period.") despite the fact that the software industry got bigger when it abandoned DRM, and despite the fact that no new medium has ever succeeded by appealing to the virtues of the medium before it (there're very few ideas more goofy than the idea that people will start buying ebooks just as soon as they have fewer features and more restrictions, provided that the ebooks can be played back on special-purpose devices with sharp screens). He cites Sony as proof of this ("Sony may be nuts, but they're not that nuts."), despite the fact that Sony was forced out of the walkman market by its failure to deliver the DRM-free devices that its customers demanded. Yes, Sony is that nuts.

He doesn't even touch on the marketplace experience of every published writer who's tried giving away DRM-free ebooks -- me, Lessig, Jim Munroe, the Baen authors, Orson Scott Card -- universally, the experience is that we sell more books (Lessig's latest just went into its third hardcover printing, for chrissakes). This of course echoes the experiences from elsewhere: the movie studios' box office revenues appear to be increasing as a function of the amount of movies being shared on P2P nets and the only quantitative study of music downloading and music sales concluded that the effect was usually neegligible, rarely negative, and sometimes positive.

He does, however, take time out to snidely dismiss blanket licensing schemes -- like the ones that enable radio, live performance, covers, lending, coursepacks, jukeboxes, rentals, etc etc etc all over the world -- as a kind of pipe dream ("When the visionary of all visionaries develops a model for all-you-can-eat media consumption that provides for the artists to actually eat, perhaps I'll change my mind; until then, we are what we are, and we'll have to play nice within the confines of the present system.") despite the fact that these systems have been employed to universal good effect whenever new technology makes exclusion too costly to work effectively. It's like he's totally missed the fact that trillions of dollars go right into the pockets of creators and rights-holders through these schemes.

Bizarrely, he asserts that people might buy periodicals that expire off their players in 60 days -- despite the fact that every one of us has a friend or relative with a giant stack of old computer mags, or National Geographics, or colorful Wireds, sitting on a shelf.

Really, it's as though he sat down and called an ebook startup's PR guy, then reasoned out all of his conclusions a priori, without reference to any of the activity in the field.

I believe fiercely and passionately in ebooks -- that's why I give talks like this one -- but articles like this do nothing to advance the discussion. They're echoes of the dotcom snakeoil that dominated the ebook discussion five or ten years ago, and it's a disappointment to see this kind of editorial-in-defiance-of-facts on a hip net-zine like Gizmodo. Link

PowerByHand gets new VP and new name for
eBook Business

PowerByHand gets new VP and new name for
eBook Business 05/21/2004 07:04 PM

Audio Ebook Project

Audio Ebook Project 06/17/2005 07:17 PM

I’m still pulling together an announcement so I don’t have a detailed write-up yet, but I wanted to note that I’m putting together the-most-incredible-offer-ever for audio ebooks for Illinois libraries (not just MLS libraries). It’s one of the other Really Big Projects I’m working on right now.

If you’re thinking about signing a contract for digital audiobooks, DON’T commit to anything until you hear this offer. If you’re dying for more info, call or email me at MLS, but I should have some info up here soon. I promise you won’t find a better deal anywhere else!

New ebook provides help with AirPort
networks

New ebook provides help with AirPort
networks 07/09/2004 10:15 AM
"Take Control of Your AirPort Network" is a new US$5 ebook that aims to help Mac users who are trying to install or improve their AirPort wireless network...

Free Culture in 100 words

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