Recently in Politics Category
Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge was our after-dinner speaker. Gigi talked about the file-sharing provisions in the recently passed Higher Education Reauthorization Act and how the work that the higher-ed community did last year to get those provisions struck from the original bill language didn't hold up when the language reappeared in a subsequent version. She contrasted that with the success of the copyright-reform community in getting the FCC to censure Comcast for interfering with the use of BitTorrent by their customers.
Gigi noted several differences in the two efforts and came up with some recommendations for future efforts in organizing activity around legislative policy efforts, including keeping constant pressure on telling the story to mainstream media, mobilizing the grass roots, enlisting allies from the commercial sector, and more (wish I had had a note pad with me at dinner).
Gigi also proposed forming a task force of university presidents to work on national IT policy issues for higher education. Sounds like a very timely idea to me. It was a great talk that left me energized about poliy issues for the first time in a long while.
I'm here in beautiful Ithaca (not kidding) for the Institute for Computer Policy and Law, where I'm speaking later today. Steve Worona is introducing the Institute. There's going to be a role play tomorrow where participants are asked to play either an entertainment industry exec, a campus CIO, or a student.
The attendees are mostly either campus attorneys or IT policy people. During introductions people are being aked to name the biggest IT policy issue at their institution - many are talking about having consistently enforced policies and many are mentioning data management policies.
I'm off today for the Institute for Computer Policy and Law at Cornell University, where I'll be on a panel tomorrow that's addressing policy issues for externally hosted email at universities. I'll try and blog as I go.
So both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are on Twitter (I assume they have folks who do their twittering for them.
Hillary has 1,486 followers, and is following 0.
Obama has 12,953 followers and is following 12,261.
Guess it shows whose campaign knows how to relate to the current generation netheads.
I didn't find John McCain on Twitter.
"What everyone else is calling Web 2.0 is fandom without the stigma" - Henry Jenkins (MIT) interviewed by Danah Boyd at last year's SXSW Interactive.
Hear it here.
UPDATE - There have been some comments that have come in with some additions to this list, and some folks who've said it's useful to have a list like this, so I'll try and add examples of legitimate p2p applications as they come in, and gather them all in this post so they're at a predictable permanent URL.
Sandy pointed out this weekend that as we have long been excoriating the entertainment industry for painting all use of peer to peer technologies as illegitimate, and for claiming that there are lots of legitimate uses for these technologies, that it might be useful to be able to provide examples of that kind of legitimate use that we can share with people who are part of these discussions with legislators.
I came up with this list and would be happy to have more examples to add to it:
Additions 10 October:
Jim Gaynor points out that Trent Reznor and his popular band Nine Inch Nails post multitrack audio files of their raw tracks in Apple's Garage Band format that they distribute via bittorrent.
It's also very interesting to see Reznor's post of 08 October that says:
I've waited a LONG time to be able to make the
following announcement: as of right now Nine Inch Nails is a totally
free agent, free of any recording contract with any label. I have
been under recording contracts for 18 years and have watched the
business radically mutate from one thing to something inherently very
different and it gives me great pleasure to be able to finally have a
direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate.
Additions 09 October:
Thom Deardorff sent in a couple of very cool bioinformatics efforts:
Chinook, which is a Canadian project that aims to "facilitate exchange of analysis techniques within a local community and/or worldwide." and
Tranche, which says "In a nutshell, we're using peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts mixed with modern encryption to make a secure distributed file system that is well-suited for proteomics research data and independent of any particular centralized authority."
Jim Gaynor notes in a comment:
VMWare offers a catalog of "virtual appliances" - pre-built VMs that can be freely shared, made by members of the VM community. Most VMs have a torrent download.
Blizzard's World of Warcraft game (an immense commercial enterprise with over 9 million subscribers) distributes game updates via bittorrent. Sometimes major content patches exceed a quarter gigabyte.
Terry points out that Joost and Skype use their own p2p protocols for video and VOIP.
Oren's Original List (07 October 2007)
Red Hat and other linux distros rely on bittorrent to distribute the operating systems and updates. There's a site that tries to keep track of them at:
http://linuxtracker.org/
There are lots of folks who use various p2p filesharing services to share files wit friends and family. One thing I saw notes that p2p offers better error correction in file transfer than most other methods.
http://bt.etree.org/ is a bittorrent network used to distribute recordings of musicians who are "trade-friendly" (authorize fans to trade recordings of their performances).
The Democracy video distribution service uses bittorrent: http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2006/03/democracy_player_rev.html
There's a bittorrent interface to Amazon's s3 storage service.
Bibster is a project that aims to assist researchers in managing, searching, and sharing bibliographic metadata (e.g. from BibTeX files) in a peer-to-peer network. - http://bibster.semanticweb.org/
Project Gutenberg uses bittorrent to distribute CD and DVD images: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_CD_and_DVD_Project
iBiblio, which calls itself "the public's library and digital archive" uses bittorrent: http://torrent.ibiblio.org/
Librivox distributes audio recordings of books that are in the public domain via bittorrent. They have a page that explains why p2p distribution is important to them at http://tinyurl.com/2gw3by
The makers of the award-winning documentary film "The Corporation" are distributing a version of the film via p2p (bittorrent). The director says:
I think most people downloading the film understand what an enormous effort it is to make a film like this and will support it, if there’s a reasonably easy way to. So, I decided to release my own “shareware” version of the film, but with a short message at the beginning, asking viewers for a little financial consideration to help offset the costs of production and keep our outreach efforts going.
Technorati Tags: copyfight
As I sit in a room of a couple of dozen geeky types that included a high of one (count 'em) woman today, I notice that Tim Bray points out the new Women in Technology series of articles created by Tatiana Apandi.
This series is comprised of articles written by women on the topic of "Women in Technology," which will run through September. My hope is that the myriad of experiences you read about here will showcase how valuable it is to hear from different women at all stages of their careers and lives.
Technorati Tags: gender, technology, women, women
Mark Luker from Educause reports that the Reid ammendment to the Higher Education Reauthorization Bill was dropped after a groundswell of criticism. Whew. There apparently is some substitute language from Sen. Kennedy being included in the "Manager's Package" on the bill that asks colleges and universities to inform their students on the following points:
(P) policies and sanctions related to copyright infringement, including --
(i) information which explicitly informs students that unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including unauthorized peer to peer file sharing, may subject them to civil and criminal penalties;
(ii) a summary of the penalties for violation of copyright laws under the US Code;
(iii) a description of the institution's policies with respect to unauthorized peer to peer file sharing including disciplinary actions which are taken against students who engage in unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials using the institution's information technology system; and
(iv) a description of steps that the institution takes to prevent and detect unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material on its information technology system.
That's all stuff we're either doing already or working on, so no problems there. This is an important battle won, but it's not the end of the story by any means.
Technorati Tags: file-sharing, p2p, policy, politics
From today on Inside Higher Ed:
Showdown Over File Sharing
College officials have been aware and wary of growing Congressional interest in student file sharing of music and videos — a practice many students consider normal and that the entertainment industry views as tantamount to theft. Colleges, generally feeling caught in the middle, have worried that Congress might try to impose an unworkable solution.
And that’s what they fear could happen this week — with the Senate majority leader (needless to say someone with whom colleges do not want to pick a fight) largely responsible. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada announced his plan to prevent “campus based digital theft” through a series of requirements that he is expected to try to attach to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, when the Senate takes up that legislation, most likely in the next day or so. The Reid plan would require colleges to:
Report annually to the U.S. Education Department on policies related to illegal downloading.
Review their procedures to be sure that they are effective.
“Provide evidence” to the Education Department that they have “developed a plan for implementing a technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property.”
The measure would also require the education secretary to annually identify the 25 colleges and universities that have in the previous year received the most notices of copyright violations using institutional technology networks.
While those provisions are in the amendment Senator Reid unveiled last week, they could easily change today or tomorrow, and lobbyists following the situation described it as fluid.
Reporting requirements are already in the reauthorization bill, so they aren’t the reason colleges are upset. Mark Luker, vice president of Educause, said that the measure on “technology based” systems would force colleges to buy software or hardware to theoretically block file sharing when that technology hasn’t yet become effective. Some experts also question whether this technology in its current form would end up blocking file-sharing that does not violate anyone’s copyright and that supports teaching and research.
“These technologies do not work well,” Luker said. “They are really not ready for prime time and colleges should not be forced to install them.”
Our colleagues from Educause urge you to CALL today, not write, your state's U.S. senators' staff members for higher education issues and tell them how much higher education opposes this amendment. Please also call Senator Reid's office (202-224-3542), Senator Edward Kennedy's office (202-224-4543), and Senator Michael Enzi's office (202-224-3424).
Technorati Tags: copyfight, file-sharing, p2p
Benkler is moving from Yale Law to Harvard Law
- Networked information economy and society
- The university and the rise of social production
- three design challenges: permeability; control vs. creativity; social applications
A story - attempts to improve vote counting by bringing in machinery, first tried in Georgia. Mainstream media didn't report any problems, but one activist got hold of source code and harnessed a new model of social production. She put the code on her site, which was replicated on a site in New Zealand - we've got hold of a source of data and here it is - read for yourself. Put together resources on the web, and asked for finding to be reported. Avi Rubin at Johns Hopkins found issues, put them on his web site, and others responded. Then Diebold felt that they had to respond. The conversation led to State of Maryland asking for a review of the technology.
The next time around Diebold filed a DMCA complaint against ISP that the activist used, and against Swarthmore which had a replica. End of story? No - because its been replicated all over the web. The network resists the supression of information. The students go to district court and the court grants them the case and Diebold has to pay.
Radical decentralization
- research & analysis
- archiving, storage, retrieval
- accreditation through self-selected peer reivew, critiqaue
- radically decentralized
- done by individuals, for individuals
- alone and in ad hoc networks of diverse longevity
- dynamic problem solving and adaptation
- not impervious, but resistant
What makes this possible?
- in 1835 it cost the equivalent of around $10k to launch a mass circulation newspaper. Changes in the environment made it 2.5 million 15 years later. For the latter you need a business model. Bifurcation around passive audiences and professional commercial producers. f
- The alternative image is SETI@home becomes a huge supercomputer.
Networked information economy -
- radically decentralized capitalization
- computation, storage, communications capacity
- all in the hands of individuals
- the most important inputs, into the core economic activities, of the most advanced economies, are widely distributed in the population.
- Behaviors once on the periphery: social motivations, cooperation, etc. are core
Commons-based production - production without exclusion from inputs or outputs. Authority to act where capacity to act resides - at the edges.
Peer production & sharing - a lot of what we value on the web is done by individuals, without price signals or managerial commans. Sharing material resources - distributed computing, wireless mesh networks, distributed storage.
Four transactional frameworks
Market vs. Non-market; centralized vs. decentralized
new competitors and new opportunities - including platforms for self-expression and collaboration. Surfers - stuff will flow out of connected human beings - inputs into production. Example of IBM's linux-based services earning far more revenue than licensing its patents.
Social production -
A real fact not a fad - the ctiical long term shift caused by the internet
- in some context more efficient than markets or firms
- sustainable and growing fast
- but a threat to incumbent businesses
at level of infrastructure and content we're seeing a battle - law has largely allowed enclosure. What's pushing back is largely market adoption as well as the development of social practices of sharing and cooperation embedded in political engagement. We continue to see tightening of IP, but only through judges, who are largely looking at the past.
The University as Subsystem
A society's knowledge production system includes multipe subsystems - mass media markets, government, gossip/superstition, religion
The university has characteristics: relatively high autonomy, distinctiveness, remove, and self-reference
- high intensity communication
- narrative of commitment to a set of values of inquiry conversation critique and peer review
- perhaps not perfect, but still exerts a direct force on the knowledge production system as a whole.
Spatial and institutional remove - the campus plays a role in structure conversation and exchange as distinctly removed. A distinct kind of conversation in which there are certain ways to behave. Should we continue to retain this coherence? How do we do it when spatial remove is impossible. He doesn't tell his student not to do email while he's talking - he assumes they do it.
Opportunities and challenges of networked environment
- greater efficacy of nonmarket action - the cost of being effective has declined. as organizations universities can do more; touch more people. By individuals within the university,, with relatively more time than average.
Use fund raising capabilities, talent, and organizational form to provide knowledge tools and platforms for society at large. ibiblio, MIT open courseware, etc as examples. Universities also a center for connectivity.
University / individuals - number of participants in open software who are students or faculty in universities is very large.
Pper production and education - learning objects; textbooks (primitive at present); learning by doing in the world - students can engage - can we bridge the outside with the inside; collaborative authorship; identity formation (MySpace?); immersive learning environments. Some research (Charlie Nesson) finds some find it easier to speak up in second life; peer production and research - large scale collaboration across organizational boundaries (e.g. HapMap); open scientific publication - self-archiving; filtering and search; institutional repositories; distributed computing - folding@home, fightAIDs@home, etc.
Permeability - A system with sufficient coherence and "inness" to be a system; and a sufficiently permeable boundary to be part of the network as a whole. Sufficient openness to enable participation: cross-institutional research and education, access to data, resources, platforms across institutions; non-institutional efforts - volunteering as practice-based education
Creativity and control - creativity in the networked environment comes from locating capacity and authority to act at the edges - this is in the process of being a generalized understanding in high tech industries. That's where the observation and solution of issues can be undestood. The more you try to control (separate authority to act from capacity to act) the more you lose the ability to learn in the system.
Parallel claims in favor of end-to-end design principal, with loose, late-binding design. Freedom, looseness, creativity leads to uncertainty and risk. When you send creativity to the edges you increase the number of possible actions, and increase complexity.
Resist urges and pressures to control - experimentation with data, video, music. The urge to control is overwhelming.
The two major security threats - the nincompoops and the bad actors. Important to constrain the nincompoops at the edges, not to constrain the masses in the process. Misbehavior should not be solved by technology, but by disciplinary systems. Misbehavior is a n educational opportunity; people exist in multiple overlapping systems; no single system need solve all problems; technical systems lack transparency of the disciplinary choice andover-regulate users
Designing for cooperation - significant literature in organizational sociology, experimental economics, field studies in political science, etc. Designed to challenge selfish rational actor model; can provide a basis for synthesizing design levers for cooperation. Working on designing for cooperation. What people want to do depends on their relationships - communication is central in how people work. Metastudy of game theory - shows that if you allow people to communicate in any way before, cooperation rises by 50%. Humanization is important. Trust construction - not the output of a system, but as an input - I trust this person to act in ways that are cooperative with me. Norm creation, transparency, monitoring, fairness is important in terms of outcomes and processes, as an input to make system work.
Anonymity is not good for cooperation.
If you impose discipline you crowd out trust.
Wrap up -= the networked information economy creates new opportunities for the university; the university can find new ways to be more effective internally as an educational and research institute.
There was some good discussion during the follow-on panel. I couldn't blog it because I was a panel participant, but I've got some notes that I'll post later, along with the comments I made.
Technorati Tags: ecar, ecar-2007-summer, political-economy, benkler
