I am helping to kick off the Decoding Liberation Book Launch Party at the Brecht Forum in NYC. If you are in the area, and are into the politics of free software, do come along. Details also pasted below as their webpage is a little bit of an aesthetic jumble.

The Brecht Forum invites you to celebrate the release of Decoding Liberation: The Promise of Free and Open Source Software, by Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter, published by Routledge in their New Media and Cyberculture Series.

October 3rd, 7:30 PM
451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets, New York, NY 10014.
(212) 242-4201
brechtforum@brechtforum.org

Suggested Donation: $6/$10/$15
Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers

Featuring commentary by Gabriella Coleman and discussions with the authors
and audience.

A reception will follow.
(more…)

Fair use is a small oasis in copyright law that allows you to quote, copy and engage with small bits of copyrighted information usually in the service of education, learning and critique. Despite what I think of as an oasis that is far too small, the economic impact is far reaching, at least according to this report, the first of its kind.

In the last week, I have been witness to and part of many conversations and probably one of my favorite ones was about coffee. My friend reasoned that coffee is as wonderful as it is because of its dependability (unlike, for example, your relatives). You know that for a moderate sum of money, you can drink a drink that makes you happy, alert, and, for some of us, allows us to face the rest of the day on an even keel. It is pure comfort that derives from a form of almost ritualistic dependability.

This morning, as I was sipping my coffee, I came across a short blog post by Stanley Fish who certainly does not make me as happy as my morning cup of joe, but I do admire him for his dependability and consistency when it comes to reporting on matters of liberalism. For over 20 years he has dependably written on the quandaries and limit of liberal political ideology and his most recent installment, which focuses primarily on a new book by Paul Starr, is no different.

Well, his conclusion strikes just a little differently than the tone of some of his previous works.

In the past (or perhaps in some of his longer academic works), Fish’s solution to the problem of competing ideologies is that there are no solutions, just incommensurable ideologies and you gotta sort of duke it out, and the strong man/woman/group wins (see Terry Eagleton for this characterization of Fish’s work. But the ending to this piece is subtly different, a tone and stance I rather prefer:

“So again, what to do? Lilla’s answer is pragmatic rather than philosophical (and all the better for that). All we can do, he says, is “cope”; that is, employ a succession of ad hoc, provisional strategies that take advantage of, and try to extend, moments of perceived mutual self-interest and practical accommodation. “We need to recognize that coping is the order of the day, not defending high principles.” Now there’s a principle we can live with, maybe.”

What I like about his ending is that it acknowledges there are times when compromise is possible, where a common meeting ground can be forged, however provisional these may be. As someone interested in the politics of consensus and accommodation, I think it is important to recognize that human beings are not simply molded by one set of values but are are often dwelling within various systems (of sometimes contradictory) values. And it is because of this multiplicity that forms of accommodation and consensus emerge and can emerge, signaling a more hopeful politics that derive not from abstract adherence to precept such as tolerance, but from the far messier realm of actual life experience.

Peter Suber provides a nice summary of the debatesaround Open Access for books vs. journals.

The debate started when Karl Fogel posted a comment on my blog asking about the licensing terms for the recently released Decoding Liberation. Tonight Karl, Scott, and Samir will meet for the first time at my house. I imagine the conversation will continue to be lively!

Collective Communications Campus is a very handy new blog covering news and information on NYC area communication, journalism, and media graduate departments, programs, lectures, and classes.

Thanks mostly to David Berry and Karl Fogel, there is a debate unfolding in the comment section of my post on whether it makes sense to open source books and in what ways the model of free software is transferable (or not) to book publishing.

It is worth reading if you are interested in this debate as the back and forth volley is pretty illuminating.

Somewhat independent of the content, Karl Fogel wrote something that I love, mostly because I often try to remind people of this, although I have not said is as eloquently and tersely as Karl:

I do not understand how you can have ‘libre’ freedom without ‘free as in beer’ freedom. While the latter does not necessarily imply the former, the former always implies the latter. If everyone can share X freely with others, than the cost will always be driven down to zero (hence X will have both freedoms); if people cannot so share, then X is, by definition, not “libre” free.

Much more there, so check it out.

Karl Fogel’s recent comment asking why Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter did not publish Decoding Liberation with some sort of open licenses, especially since they are such unabashed advocates of open licensing, spurred a flurry of further comments from the authors on my blog as well as some more thought out blog posts and commentary.

I don’t have too much to add except perhaps to state the obvious: the economics of book publishing and software are quite distinct creatures. When it comes to software, one can pull in revenue from support and services, while this is pretty much impossible for most books. Software also has a much shorter shelf life, which is why making it open access, fast, is key.

Books however have a longer shelf life, which is why I am personally not opposed to some sort of limited copyright for books (around 5 years, give or take a couple) so that publishers can recoup their costs (and in academic publishing, no one is making a bundle of money, that is sure) but then it should be made free to the world, never to die that awful death of “out of print” (in so far as it can be thrown on the web, legally).

Journal publishing is another matter and I firmly believe that articles should spread far and wide and quick because of their shorter shelf life, which tends to be shorter mostly because there are just so many articles… As Alex Golub has informed us, my own professional association has really failed not only in providing more open access journals, they are not even allowing the members of the organization any say in the matter.

But thankfully other disciplines and academics are taking open access and the possibilities afforded by new media a little more seriously and here is an edited volume by CT Watch Quarterly The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communications & Cyberinfrastructure that provides an important node in what is an important conversation.

It is nice to see books on free software finally get their day under the sun and today, Samir Chopra and Scott Dexter have announced the release of Decoding Liberation. Because it is a bit on the pricey side, try to get your library or work to order it and then when you get it, enjoy. I know I did and had the pleasure of reading early versions during an informal reading ground held in NYC 2 years ago and final versions more recently.

Among other great chapters, the one on the aesthetics of code, is, well beautiful. I can’t wait to re-read it.

If you are in the city, make sure to catch one of the book events that will be happening; your very own will help lead a discussion on October 3rd and I might write something up more formal about the book (and of course post here) then.

Pedagogical faultlines, being held in Amsterdamn in mid-September, re-examines pedagogy in light of new media technologies as well as traditional institutions…. Hopefully they will have the programme up soon, but it certainly looks quite intriguing.

I am excited to read I’ve Got Nothing to Hide” and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy by Daniel Solove and I am also excited of its “short” length, mostly because I reckon I can use this for undergraduate teaching (and will perhaps include it when I teach some version of this in the future).

I place short in scare quotes because I don’t think a 25 single spaced article is really all that short though it is flagged as such in the abstract. But given this is a law journal article, which tend to trail into the 75-100 page range (and thus out of reach for most undergraduate teaching), it is indeed tiny. I am in the lookout for more law journal articles that are under 30 pages as I find them to be quite useful in the classroom…