Copyrighteous

Several days ago, I got a message from David G. Reichert, my representative in the U.S. House of Representatives (and the incumbent candidate in one of the New York Time's "Races to Watch"). His letter started out:

As your Representative in Congress, I want to share with you some of the work I have been doing to assist orphans in underdeveloped countries.

I grew up in a family that adopted several orphans from underdeveloped countries so I'm glad to see this happening -- I really am.

But what really makes me happy is that I get to hear from my elected representative unsolicited -- for the first time, no less -- advertising his work on such a controversial subject. He seems perfectly willing to stand up for what he believes in, even if it means that he loses the crucial anti-developing-nation-orphan vote.

Who would design consumer electronic products around technological necessity when they could design them around clever bits of word play?

I came up with the idea for an "iPod Tripod" -- if you will, a "TriPod" -- and was thrilled to see that someone else had already (a) stumbled upon the same little rhyme and (b) followed through on the idea and was already selling a product!

The review I read seemed to indicate that the execution was not quite as good as the name. But then again, how could it be?

It's worth nothing that many people seem to have a hard time spelling, "it's worth noting."

I bought a TV-B-Gone a few years back. It's been fun. I make a point of never turning off a TV that anyone is obviously watching and have only once had anyone turn a television back on. Most people find it easier to just talk to the person sitting across the table than to turn the TV back on.

The only problem is that I can never really tell in advance when I'll need my TV-B-Gone and so frequently end somewhere wishing I had one when I've left it at home. What I really need is a TV-B-Gone-B-Here.

In the last couple years, I've earned something of a reputation for giving Creative Commons a hard time. This fact hit home a few weeks ago when a reporter for the San Antonio Current called me up to get "the other side" on a story he was doing on CC. Apparently, the journalist had found my name in the criticism section of Wikipedia's Creative Commons article.

Now, while I'm not happy with CC's reticence to take a normative stance of any kind and I'm not thrilled with many CC licenses that don't respect what I believe are essential freedoms, I should give credit to CC where credit is due.

Over the past half year or so, I've had the pleasure of helping represent Debian in conversations between a Debian team and folks at CC to help iron out a number of nits with the CC licenses that seemed to be (unnecessarily) creating barriers to Debian blessing some more permissive licenses as DFSG free. Throughout this process, folks at CC have been helpful, responsive, flexible, and seriously willing to make changes based on our suggestions.

The first and hardest stage of this work culminated with CC's release of the discussion draft of their 3.0 licenses. Evan Prodromou published a great in-depth report on the talks between Debian and CC that helped shape these drafts. While we didn't get 100% of what we were asking, I'm personally quite confident that we have or will get all of what is necessary to ensure that the licenses are DFSG free both in letter and spirit.

Not only does CC build several great licenses, they are willing to work with the community in difficult meaningful ways. When we build a real social movement around calls for essential freedom of culture and content, we'll be lucky to have CC writing some of the licenses that help make it happen.

In my mailbox today (links are added):

Dear Boston Vegetarian Society List,

The curator of the World Carrot Museum will be joining us at Happy Buddha on a visit from the UK!

I've never met anyone who has created a museum about a vegetable but I'm intrigued. I'm also pleased to see that similar ventures exist for vegetables that I enjoy even more than carrots.

XM Radio claims that it's "Beyond AM. Beyond FM." I'm sure that's the case. I'm a little less clear on what it is, outside of the first letter in the acronym, they are modulating.

During Wikimania, I was explaining to someone that Aziz Ridouan (Audionautes) was staying at Elizabeth Stark's apartment, that Elizabeth Stark was staying at Jean-Baptiste Soufron's apartment, and that Jean-Baptiste Soufron was staying at my apartment.

In fact, all four of us have slept at least one night at both the Acetarium and at Jean-Baptiste's apartment in the last month and a half.

Any Day Now, The Official Ubuntu Book will show up in stores. I have a rubber-banded-together copy of the folded and gathered sheets and the the first batch of books should be bound (or being bound) right now. Those who have pre-ordered it from Amazon or elsewhere should have it in their hands quickly.

In addition to my own name on the author page is (future Ubuntu Community Manager) Jono Bacon, Corey Burger, Jonathan Jesse, and Ivan Krstić. Many more members of the Ubuntu community and many editors at Prentice Hall deserve credit as well.

I'm proud of the book. I sense that it's more consistent, better organized, and of a higher overall quality than my last book. Even better though, is the fact that the book is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. Several chapters are already being shipped by default on the Ubuntu desktop and several translations are underway.

You can read more about the book on the publishers site and order it from any number of places online. Books under such licenses are economically risky for publishers so please support the project by buying it if you end up finding the text useful!