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Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.
 

Question about Creative Commons Permanent link to this item in the archive.

I like to ask technical questions here on Scripting News for a few reasons:

1. If I have the question, there are probably others who have it too. So everyone has a chance to learn.

2. We create an archived thread of knowledge on the subject for the search engines. I benefit from other groups that discuss things that I need to know, there's nothing like practical answers to problems real people have.

3. It gives readers a chance to show off what they know, and gives me a chance to learn about the people who read this site. I am always impressed with the deep knowledge of these people, and their generosity, their willingness to help.

So with that in mind, I have a technical question about something that isn't technology, but is something technologists are using, the Creative Commons.

Back in 2004, when the Creative Commons was very new, and I was working at Berkman Center which was one of the proponents of the Commons, it seemed natural to release the RSS 2.0 spec under one of the licenses. Subsequently, it became a common practice in spec-writing, for example when Microsoft released the SSE spec, they also used the Creative Commons.

It made sense to do so, because it follows in the precedent set by the IETF, the share-alike, for-attribution license, to this non-legal mind, is more or less the same license that the IETF has used for many years for its specs.

So the question is this -- if there are disputes about a work that's licensed under the Creative Commons, what are the mechanisms available to mediate or arbitrate such disputes? Perhaps such mediation is a service that one of the law schools, Stanford or Harvard, might provide? It seems that when a work is licensed under the CC, there should be some free help available to guide the use of the licensed material, since (I presume) one of the goals of the CC is to encourage creative people to be non-commercial with their works. If there's no way to profit from the work, it seems unfair that it should cost money to enforce the terms of the license (however these days nothing about the legal system seems fair to me).

So this is a technical question addressed to lawyers who read Scripting News. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Dan O'Shea is a lawyer who is interested in doing this work.

Creative Commons: "A Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses your work contrary to the license terms."

Italians want to know Permanent link to this item in the archive.

Paolo says they want to know what we think of them.

I was talking yesterday with my friend Mary Trigiani, who as you can tell by her last name, is of Italian descent. Her grandparents were born in the old country. I told her my impression, that for a country of such beauty, and a people so intelligent and friendly, and one that seems from the outsider's point of view to run so well, they sure think very little of themselves!

I didn't see any homeless people in Italy. There were some beggars, they were very aggressive, but they didn't persist if you ignored them. But even they seemed to be taking reasonably good care of themselves.

And the cities are so fantastically beautiful. When Italians visit the United States, what must they think of us. We can't even keep our streets clean. True, NY is doing much better, but we have a long way to go. And our food, it's nothing compared to theirs. Honestly I don't think I had ever really tasted fish until I had lunch with Marco and Paolo in Genova. You can ask them how I was gushing over the flavors and textures.

I go back to the advice I gave at the end of my trip. Let's have an international blogger's camp in rural Italy, off-season, a week retreat, where we talk about the world, in an expansive way. Let Italy be the first host. Then we go somewhere else, maybe South America, New Zealand, Korea. Let's find what's great about all our cultures, and learn from each other.

I think if Italians use the rest of us a mirror they might learn to appreciate what they have more than they do now. It's a beautiful place. And the people are nice. What more could you ask for!

OJ's confession on BitTorrent Permanent link to this item in the archive.

TorrentFreak: "In 2006 O.J Simpson announced he was releasing a book in which he would detail what would have happened, had he really committed the horrific murders of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in 1994. After public outrage, the book was shelved and 400,000 copies of the book were destroyed but now a digital version has been leaked to BitTorrent."

     

Last update: Friday, June 22, 2007 at 6:26 AM Pacific.

Dave Winer, 52, pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in Berkeley, California.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

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On This Day In: 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997.

June 2007
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Things to revisit:

1.Microsoft patent acid test.
2.What is a weblog?
3.Advertising R.I.P.
4.How to embrace & extend.
5.Bubble Burst 2.0.
6.This I Believe.
7.Most RSS readers are wrong.
8.Who is Phil Jones?
9.Send them away.
10.Negotiate with users.
11.Preserving ideas.
12.Empire of the Air.
13.NPR speech.
14.Russo & Hale.
15.Trouble at the Chronicle.
15.RSS 2.0.
16.Checkbox News.
17.Spreadsheet calls over the Internet.
18.Twitter as coral reef.
19.Mobs of the blogosphere.
20.Advice for Campaigns.
21.Social Cameras.
22.The Next Big Thing.
23.It's time to open up networking, again.
24.Am I competing?

Teller: "To discover is not merely to encounter, but to comprehend and reveal, to apprehend something new and true and deliver it to the world."

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