Martin Gordon's Blog

Ars Technica has a great article today on Professor Lessig's potential run for Congress that I mentioned yesterday. The article does an excellent job of outlining Lessig's platform in far better detail than the one sentence I gave it. What's particularly interesting about his position is his desire to build a Creative Commons in Congress, where "[i]f politicians begin foreswearing PAC money, the theory runs, voters may come to see the failure to refuse lobbyist dollars as a badge of shame rather than simply the way things are done." This sounds like a very necessary change and requires the proverbial "Washington outsider" to really get going - Lessig is that outsider. Further, the article elaborates on the difference between Lessig and his greatest rival in the race, Jackie Speier. Lessig mentions that there aren't many differences, but that a focus on technology would give him an edge and that even though many prominent California Democrats have thrown their support behind Speier, the rush to consolidate support has frustrated voters who want more options. As I said yesterday, I can't wait to see how this plays out.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, Lessig, Congress, Tom Lantos, Jackie Speier, Creative Commons, Free Culture, Change Congress, Draft Lessig

I wrote about Professor Larry Lessig's shift in focus from Free Culture to corruption in Washington when he gave his last Free Culture talk. Since then, a seat has opened up in Congress as a result of the death of California Congressman Tom Lantos. Lessig posted on his weblog earlier today that a Facebook group and the draftlessig08.org website have caused him to actually consider running.

I think Lessig has a great chance of winning thanks to support from the tech community. Having him in Congress would not only be excellent for his next project, but would also help along causes that current Congress members are either too tech illiterate or too influenced by money to really address the right way (one such cause being Net Neutrality).

There's no word on when he'll make a decision, but along with the rest of the tech community, I wait with bated breath.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, Lessig, Congress, Tom Lantos, Free Culture, Change Congress, Draft Lessig

Larry Lessig will be giving his last talk on the topic of "Free Culture" in about an hour. I had the pleasure of seeing Professor Lessig give this talk in September of 2006 as part of the Penn Reading Project and I think the ideas he presents are fascinating and have had a great impact on me. We've come a long way in some areas, such as in the slow death of over-restrictive DRM, but we're still a ways to go in other areas, such as the predatory litigation undertaken by the music and movie industries. As the blog post announcing the talk mentions, Professor Lessig will begin focusing on corruption in Washington, a topic I'm admittedly less interested in.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, copyright, creative commons, DRM, intellectual property, Free Culture

It seems like every week we get yet another guide on how to use RSS and a BitTorrent client to download TV shows automagically. Xtorrent, a Dave Watanabe (of NewsFire fame) app, will soon render those guides obsolete. Beta 3, released last week, adds built-in support for RSS. I've been using it for a few days now and it works wonderfully. Getting started requires only three steps:

Step 1. Find an RSS feed that has .torrent files enclosed (say, from tvRSS.net)
Step 2. Click the RSS+ button at the bottom of the source pane to add the feed.
Step 3. Find your feed in the source pane and double-click or click download to start getting the selected torrent.

Xtorrent has nowhere near the download/upload configuration options that an app like Azureus has, but it is still in beta and the default settings work just fine. Pre-release pricing is available for a limited time ($15.89 vs $18.99), so now is a good a time as any to pick it up.

Note: Downloading copyrighted television programs is a violation of copyright laws. Download at your own risk.

Technorati Tags: TV, television, video, P2P, BitTorrent, Xtorrent, torrent, Dave Watanabe, NewsFire, RSS

I just got an email from our Undergraduate Assembly chair announcing that Ruckus will be available to all Penn students for free (read: factored into tuition):

The Undergraduate Assembly, working with GAPSA, College Houses and Academic
Services, the Residential Advisory Board, and Information Systems and Computing
proudly provide a FREE, legal, music downloading service to all Penn students.

http://www.upenn.edu/computing/music/index.html

The Ruckus music library contains over 1.5 million tracks of music!

Ruckus offers:

* Unlimited downloads of music to your computer
* Downloads that are legal, virus free and sypware free
* New releases added every Wednesday
* Albums download in under a minute
* Online community, allowing you to trade playlists, share
recommendations and connect with friends
* Hundreds of movie titles and many current and classic television
series for an extra fee
* For more information about Ruckus at Penn, read the FAQ
-NOTE: Does not upload songs to iPod-

For what it's worth, here is the Daily Pennsylvanian article on it and the University FAQ page.

I do have to say that this is a huge disappointment. While I don't necessarily condone piracy and I do understand the University's need to cover their asses, they could have tried something a little more out of the box. Penn alum, Larry Lessig, spoke here for New Student Orientation. Why not work something out with Creative Commons? I'm sure the Podsafe Music Network wouldn't mind the exposure if they were willing to work out a deal. eMusic offers DRM-free (and hence cross-platform) music. What about a straight subsidy for a subscription based on the student's choice? I'll take $100/year from the iTunes Store over a worthless subscription to Ruckus. Now, I'm not discounting the evils of Apple's closed system, but if you want everyone to use your service, make it work on the devices everyone already used (I know this is impossible in the current state of things).

This is just stupid, stupid, stupid. Despite being pretty OS-agnostic, the University is now indirectly adopting Windows as the default OS choice. Imagine campus sales rep: "Well, the Mac would be ideal for your photography/filmography major, but you won't have access to the music service you're forced to buy into." And what about the 80%+ marketshare (probably a lot higher in college) the iPod holds? How do you explain to Joe English Major that his iPod can't play the music he's listening to on his PC? Even Microsoft's own Zune music player won't play PlaysForSure music from other services.

Is this new music service going to make music piracy disappear on campus? Absolutely not. Mac and Linux users gain nothing from the service and will continue to acquire music by the same means they used to. Windows users with iPods are in the same boat. They'll continue to pirate music or buy it from iTunes so it'll play on the iPod. Those that are able to might try it out, but it's not going to replace conventional means. Meanwhile, I'll be subsidizing this little experiment while listening to my free podcasts and live recordings.

Technorati Tags: University of Pennsylvania, Penn, UPenn, DRM, copyright, music, online music, Ruckus, subscriptions, Windows, PlaysForSure, Apple, iTunes, Creative Commons, iPod, Microsoft, Zune, eMusic, student government

Warner embraces YouTube and now Yahoo is offering an entire album DRM free. The album is Jesse McCartney's Right Where You Want Me and will be available for the iTunes-competing price of $9.99. While the music may be of questionable quality, it might be a good idea to urge people to pick this up to send the message that we are willing to pay for DRM-free music.

Technorati Tags: copyright, YouTube, Warner Music, Yahoo Music, Yahoo, DRM, rights, free, Jesse McCartney

The class I am currently sitting in has a list of recommended blogs on the syllabus. We just watched a video podcast. Cool!

Technorati Tags: blogs, yomoblog, copyright, culture, penn, university of pennsylvania

Larry Lessig spoke at Penn yesterday as part of the Penn Reading Project. His book, Free Culture, was given to all freshmen who were split up into discussion groups after Lessig's presentation. Penn Law professor Polk Wagner presented an opposing side. I was excited to see the famed Lessig presentation method in person and I hope Professor Lessig makes the presentation (or at least the links to the videos he showed) available.

I've got some pictures up on Flickr and here's a direct link to the audio.

This audio work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Technorati Tags: Larry Lessig, Lessig, Creative Commons, copyright, law, regulation, Free Culture, remix, Penn Reading Project, Penn, UPenn, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I got a message on Flickr from someone named Anne-Sophie asking for permission to use some of my photos from the Howie Day show last October:

Hi there,

I was wondering if I could possibly trouble you for some of the Howie Day photos you have from 10.07.05. I am interested in the ones with the beautiful lighting effects to possibly use for the lighting designer's portfolio.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Anne-Sophie

Given that Adam Curry is in Amsterdam today to fight against a tabloid that published pictures from his Flickr photostream, I'm glad that someone actually took the time out to ask me if they could use my pictures even if I probably never would have found out that they had lifted them.

I thought that was kind of cool and of course I said yes! Here's the photoset if you're interested.

Technorati Tags: Flickr, Howie Day, lighting, photography, permission, copyright, Adam Curry, infringement, tabloids