So it looks like I SUMBITTED instead of SUBMITTED a dissertation. Darn, I better change that today and I will make sure that I update it online.

So I missed a number of talks and events the last day from WTH. But one of the truly astounding elements of this con is that they basically but everything online,–videos, slides, commentary–within a day or two.

There was a nice-looking talk on the History of Unix and a more controversial discussion on the place of “free speech ideology” among hackers, organized by Toni Prug. Given that my dissertation covers the rise of expressive rights among hackers, I am especially interested in this discusison. I will refrain from commenting until I see the video (available at the link above).

Taran is in Guyana, the site of my previous project on Kali Mai religious healing. He is updating his blog with a lot of good information and stories on the F/OSS work he is doing down there. Anyone interested in the politics of free software adoption and Guyana/Caribbean, should check out his posts.

As he often writes about, we rarely hear news from this region of the world, and the Guyanas and Suriname probably top the list in terms of “relative obscurity.” Back in 98, 99, when many newspapers were still not online, many of Guyana’s publications were available, making it very easy to keep abreast of developments.

Today, via Anarchogeek I learned that there is a new TV station down in the “Global South,” Telesur. They are tackling the problems of corporate media and their broadcasting and mission look very promising. Read more from rabble.

Via apophenia, the PTO finds Dykes on Bikes patently offensive, reject name

Twice, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected the Dykes’ application, on the grounds that “dyke” is vulgar, offensive and “scandalous.” Patent office attorneys even point to Webster’s dictionary, which says dyke is “often used disparagingly.”

“The examining attorney found it to be offensive to a significant portion of the lesbian community,” said Jessie Roberts, a trademark administrator with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “And we’re also looking out for the sensitivities of the general public more than that of a specific applicant.”

I failed, miserably, with my picture test (the picture is of a turtle, skying high for A disc) and am too lazy to figure it right now. But do take some time to check out what is one of the most ironically delicious pictures of the fight againts EU patents

Over a year ago I took some time off from my dissertation to write an article on Indymedia. The editor kept pushing me to write more and the next thing I knew, it balloned out to nearly 40 pages. Since then, the Planet Work journal has not published another issue, which is a shame. But recently, the article has taken on a new life, thanks to the translation work of a prolific French writer Anne Querrien over at Multitudes (and as usual thanks of course to Patrice R ). This version is not only in French but a little shorter than the original.

For those who read French, the Paris IMC (note their *really* nice banner) folks put the full Multitudes article up on thier documentation site. If your French is strong (or even weak, who cares), the entire issue, which is on alternative and post media(s) (Blogs, radio, peer to peer) looks really good. I look forward to receiving it in the mail and taking a stab at my weak French (perhaps more like my: non-existent-I-recognize-words-because-of-Spanish-French).

I went to a fairly well-off high school in San Juan Puerto Rico for 14 years. I actually failed the enterance exam (I could not draw a house or talk properly with the psychologist) but they let me in anyway and I guess it turned out all right. Despite the fact that the school served the upper crust of society, many of the teachers were fairly liberal or flaming leftists. In retrospect, I can’t quite understand how the school’s board, composed of a small collection of San Juan’s business men, lawyers and doctors (and perhaps one or two ladies) ever let this happen but I am glad they did. During my tenure there, I had 2 years of Puerto Rican history with a Puerto Rican Independista who pretty much loathed the United States, and its “eeeemperialism.” I still hold a great love of following Latin American politics and it has been interesting and exciting to see various LA countries creep over to the left side of the spectrum. One of my PR Linux buddies, Pedro, wrote up an excellent overview of the current situation, the American response, and also placed it within a longer historical perspective. It is a great read: U.S. in the O.A.S. and its Relation to Latin America

Yo, yo, help out if you haver the knowledge/desire:

********

The Social Science Research Council invites you to collaborate on a real-time history of the politics of open source software adoption. We are pleased to offer a first version of this account?POSA 1.0 (500KB .pdf)–in both .pdf and wiki versions, here POSA 1.0 includes contributions from Gabriella Coleman, Kenneth Cukier, Shay David, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, Eugene Kim, Volker Grassmuck, Bildad Kagai, Nicolas Kimolo, and Jennifer Urban, and is edited by Joe Karaganis (SSRC) and Robert Latham (SSRC).

Our project begins with the observation that accounts of the Free and/or Open Source Software (FOSS) movement, to date, have been oriented mostly by the improbable fact of FOSS?s existence. At this stage of FOSS development and advocacy, we want to ask a different set of questions?not how open source works as a social and technical project, or whether open source provides benefits in terms of cost, security, etc., but rather how open source is becoming embedded in political arenas and policy debates. For our purposes, understanding the ?politics of adoption? means stepping back from the task of explaining or justifying FOSS in order to ask how increasingly canonical explanations and justifications are mobilized in different political contexts. POSA 1.0 maps many of the different kinds of political and institutional venues in which FOSS adoption is at stake. It tries to understand important institutional actors within those venues, and the ways in which arguments for and against FOSS are framed and advanced. It seeks to clarify the different opportunities and constraints facing FOSS adoption in different sectors and parts of the world. It is an inevitably partial account that–we hope–can be extended and deepened by other participants in these processes. We invite your help in preparing POSA 2.0.
To sweeten the pot, two prizes of $250 will be awarded to the best
contributions to POSA 2.0

A Grassroots Expose of the Impact of India’s New Patent Legislation on AIDS Treatment

This ethnographic based project is timely. Given India’s recent change in patent laws, these academics/activists are going to document, on the ground, how families manage (or not) to get AIDS drugs. Look below for the project goals:

During the summer of 2005, we plan to create a baseline record that establishes how India’s HIV-infected populations depend on the Indian versions of Western patented Anti-retro Viral (ARV) drugs to survive. The baseline will also establish how they think they will manage as drug prices surge and any stockpiled drugs are depleted.

Using audio recorders, photographs and video, we plan to document the lives of families struggling to buy ARV drugs to keep a family member healthy; the challenges that stigmatized AIDS patients face in trying to earn enough money to buy the lifesaving treatment; activists desperately searching for new sources of inexpensive ARV drugs or lobbying the Indian government to grant compulsory licenses to continue producing cheap drugs. We plan to visit AIDS shelters and hospices in and around Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai.

The voices of those who support the new patent laws are only growing louder in the press, while the opposition to the law from the families and activists struggling to keep HIV-infected people alive has been reduced to one sentence that appears in almost all articles about the benefits of india’s new patent laws: “Some international medical-aid organizations protested the new patent regime, arguing it could crimp the supply of inexpensive generic drugs made in India.”

They have faced significant hurdles getting funding from traditional NGO’s (via their blog). Do support them with a small donation or if broke, do spread the word!

So my mom composed this song about a year ago and unfortunately I don’t have a digital recorder to record it but she is demanding that I publish it before someone else claims that they authored it. She is *very excited* that this song will exist, out there on that nebulous Internet which she has never really had the chance to see.

She sings this song to about every person she meets so perhaps it will become a popular folk song. If you know anything about Puerto Rican politics, this song is pretty funny, although somewhat inflammatory (which makes it all that much better), because she is dising, hard, the current political status quo, which is commenwealth, a sort of semi-colonial state.

********************************
Puertorriquenos toma conciencia
en estas eleciones, usa tu inteligencia

Puertorriquenos tu dignidad esta en la independencia
o en la Estadidad
Y NADA MAS, nada mas ….

Puertorriquenos toma conciencia

(sound maracas, move to dancing)

by Vera Coleman
*******************************************************

In my dissertation’s conclusion I examine how the arena of FOSS has functioned as a form of cultural critique. I argue through its notoriety, it works to lay bare the normative assertions that economic incentives are a necessary catalyst to intellectual production.

Now there are a panoply of endeavors, from the Creative Commons to MIT’s Open Course Ware following suit.

The mere existence of a material practice such as FOSS and these others examples, however, cannot obviate normative argumentation that appeals to universal principles or theories of human nature. Under threat, these principles may clamor for more attention. And I would say in the last year alone, the attacks made against the reformulated legal principles encoded by FOSS and similar endeavors, have become more visible and voracious than before. The tide is shifting and the battle over the direction, importance, and scope of IP is now starting to boil.

For example, the silent weapon of the right, think tanks, have started to attack these emergent principles that modify the traditional principles of IP law. There is the the infamous Alexis de Tocqueville Institution that attacked Linux directly and more recently the Progress Freedom Foundation has attacked open source on the grounds that IP law as it stands is necessary for freedom and a vital economy.

The media are front runners in this war. Recently the NYT ran an editorial When David Steals Goliath’s Music that uses a language of doom and gloom and tactics of naturalization to argue for stringent IP protections: