All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

this is my older blog, i have taken it offline.  it will be replaced shortly.  with a new blog

here’s the wordle of the dissertation i turned in…

US House officials have confirmed hackers breaching several websites belonging to House of Representatives members in the past week. Portions of the websites were replaced by digital graffiti which began earlier this month [From Dozens of US House of Representatives Websites Hacked]

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Unsurprising, given the infrastructure, but surprising given the possible repercussion.

Here is my position on Creative Commons and Copyleft… they are bandaids that hide a gaping wound by stemming the tide of part of the blood.

Here is the problem.  Copyright is supposed to protect the rights of the producer who fixes expression onto media for distribution.  However, copyright has become, through its expansion to programming languages, related algorythmic expression and similar extensions a way to protect the rights of the most powerful distributor of expressed knowledge.  That is, copyright fails to make clear the difference between the knowledge and the expression of knowledge, because it fails to limit the techniques of enclosure that seek to put copyright on expressed knowledge in order to limit access to that knowledge.  In short, I argue that copyright has slid into the realm of a form closer to the intent of the patent.  It will take several laws to changes this.  Policy alone won’t work.

What role does CC and copyleft have in this issue?  They are licenses that recognize the current copyright system as valid, that is to say they recognize that people can put a copyright on an expression of knowledge, and thus come to own that expression, and if they cover enough expressions of said knowledge they can defend that expression in court.  However, because people can license things under copyright and ‘give them away’ or enter into other terms of contract.  There is no felt necessity for resolving the real problem of copyright.  For if it is in your interest to resist copyright, you now have a legal framework to do so that does not require any legal change, but in all likelihood could be wiped out by one of the forthcoming treaties or other similar changes.  Thus what one has done by entering into a license such as these is reified the regime they exist within, not resisted it in any way.  It is like people in a park playing frisbee(tm), some are playing with a copyrighted expression and others have said, I’ll play with a frisbee that i’ll paint black, and paint  a different logo on it. It is the same basic problem, only they are performing the problem slightly differently in order, they think to make a point, but what it only does is detract from the point that the people with the frisbee brand frisbee(tm) are playing the same games and having the same fun they have always had and you are just performing the same form of fun in the same park, with the same rules.  Both are perpetuating the game of frisbee, they are defining the field by their play, and really changing nothing.  Similarly, CC and copyleft are playing the game of copyright, maintaining the system through their actions instead of actively trying to change it in a meaningful manner.

Learning and Research in Second Life Brisbane

Call for Participation

1-5pm, Friday 24th July, QUT Gardens Point, QUT – Rm S405A

RSVP deadline July 15th 2009

Second Life(R) is a 3d virtual environment created by Linden Lab which has captured the attentions of researchers and teachers from around the world from a variety of disciplines.

This 1/2 day workshop aims to improve the understanding of Second Life as a Learning and Research environment. It will bring 20-30 researchers together to collaborate, discuss and workshop diverse topics related to research and learning in Second Life. We will pursue a schedule in which participants will discuss their work and interests on three different topics: learning in Second Life, research practices in virtual worlds, and ethical research methods. In the end we will try to come to terms with how can we better integrate our research learning practices in this sphere?

This workshop is targeted at people who have experience in virtual worlds and wish to work with others to improve their research and their learning experiences in world.

The workshop encourages researchers to share papers by submitting them before hand and to send a short biography to jeremy.hunsinger at gmail.com. The papers and bios will be distributed amongst participants before the workshop. These papers and bios have the purpose of providing a common platform for understanding our research together during the workshop.

We welcome professionals, faculty and graduate students to participate.

This workshop is organized by Jeremy Hunsinger and Ross Brown

Sponsored by QUT, Faculty of Creative Industries.

Contact Dr Ross Brown – r.brown at qut.edu.au for any further details.

QUT Location – http://tinyurl.com/l3hd97
Campus Map -
http://www.qut.edu.au/about/location/pdf/gardenspoint_map_colour.pdf

[From Putumayo World Music Blog | Official Blog Launch & Kickoff Post: DJ Spooky, Lila Downs and Herbie Treehead Discuss Kids Music!]

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an interesting if short conversation the world music blog.

http://www.amazon.com/International-Handbook-Internet-Research-Hunsinger/dp/1402097883/

512 pages, less than 1 dollar per page.

JURN directory
Links to selected arts & humanities ejournals. Journals listed are either free, or offer significant free content.

[From JURN : directory of scholarly ejournals in the arts & humanities]

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this looks like a good resource, though the javascript is a bit irritating.

EMI has told Danger Mouse that his latest CD won’t see the light of day due to “legal issues,” so he’s responding by releasing the disc as a blank CD-R in a jewel case with art and liner notes. Fans can just download the music off a P2P site and burn it to the CD-R. [From Danger Mouse's EMI-killed CD will be released as a blank CD-R, just add download]

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this is brilliant

[From SocProf Supports William I. Robinson | The Global Sociology Blog]

As do I.

It amazes me that this sort of thing goes on. It is quite worrisome in terms of academic freedom, not that we necessarily have any more freedom than others as academics, but that we are supposed to be able to speak and share knowledge… make comparisons that may make people uncomfortable. Knowedge does that…. makes people uncomfortable.