The students in my Hacker Culture and Politics have now been at the question of politics and ethics in the world of hacking for over a month. I think a pretty solid foundation has been built and now we are getting into much nittier grittier issues, like intellectual property law. The latest entry is on IP and provides an excellent sense of what we talked about and what we covered in class and in the readings.

I am excited to see the class blog develop, if nothing else, because it gives a pretty good sense of the topics we cover and what conversations we have. I used to find it frustrating to have classes literally vanish away after they were done and yet so much labor and time had been put in them! This type of blogging is important as it can provide a tangible and somewhat fixed medium for capturing and preserving what happened (and then free you from having to save boxes of notes that you can collect during college).

I know there were a number of times I really really wanted to recall something from one of my undergraduate classes, but since I had finally thrown away the big old boxes of notes and readings from those days, there was no place to look. It was just not practical to lug my boxes of notes from place to place, move to move especially when I only wanted to take a look every few years for maybe one thing. With this type of blog, there is a record of what happened for everyone to share.

That said, I am faced with a problem when I teach this class again. Since we provide what I think is a pretty decent account of what we are doing, I will most probably have to put down the blog for a period of time when I am teaching it again though of course the syllabus and readings will also change to some degree.

One thing I am known to do is complain how the public/academic discourse surrounding/around technology/computers is overwhelmingly male (Lessig, Benkler, Zittrain, Shirky and I can go on and on). But one day I realized that if I am bothered by it, I should do more than talk the (often) empty talk of complaint. So I decided to enroll in a day long training for writing OpEds, which kicks off tomorrow.

I am not sure if engaging in public debate is what I want to do, mostly because of piling more work and time commitments on a very full plate but I am starting to explore what it means and what it may take to leave the Ivory Tower. Here is a little more info about the OpEd Project:

The OpEd Project – featured by The New York Times, Feministing.com and Katie Couric on CBS News – is an initiative to expand public debate, with an immediate focus on targeting and training women experts across the nation to project their voices on the op-ed pages of major newspapers, online sites and other key forums of public discourse. The lack of diversity on the op-ed pages – which are a source for all other media – deprives the public of robust, democratic debate, especially important in this space which is intended to showcase divergent opinions. It also means we are only hearing from a tiny sliver of the nation’s best thinkers. Imagine a baseball team of only pitchers – how well would it do?

Although I doubt there are any French historians who read this blog, there may be a few IP historical wizards who can help me answer the following question about Denis Diderot, the editor and one of the main writers of the famous Enlightenment Encyclopedia, who apparently was a pro-copyright kinda guy.

According to this Carla Hesse article, Diderot, who participated in the emerging debates around idea of copyright, “argued that products of the mind are more uniquely the property of their creator than land acquired through cultivation” (Hesse, p. 34). She furnishes us with the following quote from Diderot that captures this moral sensibility:

What form of wealth could belong to a man, if not the work of the mind. If not his own thoughts … the most precious part of himself, that will never perish, that will immortalize them? What comparison could there be between a man, the very substance of a man, his soul, and a field, a tree, a vine, that nature has offered in the beginning equally to all, and which the individual has only appropriated through cultivating it”

My first questions is, if this is the case, did he differentiate between the literary efforts of, lets say a novel, which he wrote as well, and his Encyclopedia whereby the former would be eligible for copyright protection (as it has to do with personal thoughts and originality) whereas the later would not because it was less about originality and more about cataloging human affairs, actions, and knowledge (though of course it did require work of the mind). Another more simple way of putting this is: did he desire/seek copyright protection for the Encyclopedia?

It is also worth noting that a good chunk of the Encyclopedia documented the practical arts or in other words, craft. As Richard Sennet describes it in his amazing book on craft making as follows: “It volumes exhaustively described in words and pictures how practical things get done and proposed ways to do them” (2008: 90). Remember too this was a project of collaboration and he apparently collaborated with many scientists as well.

So the subject matter was a domain of knowledge whose utility, so to speak, could come to fruition if it had an ability to be passed on person to person, generation to generation. This makes me want to know even more than I do (and I do want to know) whether he viewed copyright as appropriate for a literary work that basically described the practical arts and which was also created through the hands and minds of many (though he did did seem to sweat and labor more than anyone else.). Any thoughts? Answers?

I want this book. The problem is I don’t want to pay $324.79 for it either. Looks like a great collection of essays. It has one of my favorite articles on the history of intellectual property by Carla Hesse, which you can download for yourself here.

In a mere 20 pages she conveys not only a general history of IP law in Europe and the United States,(which she actually makes riveting) but captures the philosophical contradictions and problems that have marked and marred IP as it has traveled from nation to nation and as it has grown in scope and depth in the last 200 years. I cannot recommend it enough.

I am a big fan of zotero as it has helped me manage my research, especially collect, tag, time stamp, and keep web pages that are likely to vanish. I can’t recommend it enough. I have yet to use its bibliographic functionality and apparently it is this functionality which has made it the subject of what what looks like a pretty questionable law suit.

It has been a while since a IP lawsuit has really caught my attention (only in so far as it was the same old thing, not because it was not important) but this one definitely has caught my attention (and caught me off guard as well as I never really associated End Notes with Zotero, in so far as they seem to work pretty distinctly). I am eager to see how an academic institution, George Mason in this case, will react. I just hope they stand firm and also get some great legal team to help out.

Ten Easy Ways to Attract Women to Your Free Software Project?

I am a little to sick with a cold now to say anything substantive. I agree in spirit with a lot of what the author says though I still think that part of the problem emerges way before the free software project. I still want to know, in other words, why girls/women are not hacking away at a younger age, which puts them at a disadvantage when and if they decided to join a project.

Also, though the author as an important caveat in one of his footnotes:

[10] Throughout this article I make a lot of generalizations about how “men” and “women” behave. Obviously men and women are not monolithic groups, and there’s a lot of variation, so this is just short hand. There are some important differences that apply in the real world, though, whether because of nature or nurture. Indeed, in writing this article, I have taken the assumption that many of the issues are really just manifestations of lifestyle differences, and it’s largely because of lifestyle issues that I feel I can identify with many of the problems that women face when dealing with “hacker culture” in general and “free software” in particular.

I am still more than a little bothered by the essentialized portrayal of females/males and the concomicant technlogical determinism as well.

Thoughts?

Last weekend at the Software Freedom Day party, I was a little surprised to find myself among hundreds of attendees and supporters. Even if NYC is not known, like Silicon Valley is, for its vibrant tech scene, this event reminded me that we definitely have a thriving community of programmers and advocates but we have lacked a central “place” to check for computer-related events in the area.

At least until now. James Vasile, a lawyer at the Software Freedom Law Center will now be publishing an event feed. Please send him an email if there is any event you want advertised (contact details on his page), you can subscribe here, and here is a calendar.

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Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

****

The source of this? A former U of C graduate anthropology classmate. This actually may be the original source, or like all really good spam, somewhat (seemingly at least) sourceless.

The Big Fail

Parties around the world were held yesterday to celebrate Software Freedom Day. I went to the NYC party which attracted an impressive number of people who were mingling and celebrating on the beautiful rooftop of Limegroup/Limewire office. Here are a few pictures and a short video of Eben Moglen who has done a whole lot to make software freedom a reality today.