shouting loudly

Tim O’Reilly proposes a Bloggers Code of Conduct The code of conduct comes in the wake of death threats sent to Kate Sierra, who as a result cancelled a public appearance and suspended her blog. Sending death threats to someone is obviously unacceptable behavior and measures should be taken against it. Having said that, I [...]

Thinner is a German electronic music label that has been distributing MP3 files since 2001, with all tracks licensed under Creative Commons (Attrib-NoDerivs-NonCommercial). It’s nice to find labels like these that seek to distribute good music around the world. More labels that distribute music online can be found on their links page. (dibs to Christoph [...]

Apparently a Japanese court ruled in July 2006 that all Japanese films produced before 1953 are part of the Public Domain. That includes one of the most brilliant movies in film history: Rashomon by Kurosawa. if you haven’t seen it yet, you have no excuse but to check it out at the Internet Archive: Rashomon.

Rebecca MacKinnon reports about possible U.S. Military censorship, and warns us for the slippery slope we have started. A couple of thousand years ago, the Chinese built the Great Wall to keep the hordes of barbarians out. Fast forward to now: the Chinese have been building the Great Firewall to keep ‘unhealthy’ information out. What [...]

This blog is not all about bad news! Judge Anna Diggs Taylor from Detroit is the first judge to rule about the legality of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program – it was justified as necessary for battling terrorism but is now found to violate the rights to free speech, privacy as well as [...]

a breakthrough for the creative commons: the cc licenses are now finally available in (simplified) chinese, with some help from renmin university. the enablers and constraints on its diffusion process and to what degree these will be ‘culturally’ influenced will be a fascinating development to watch itself unfold in the coming period.

CSPD20Comics – a copyright comic! It is like an interbred marriage between my two dear colleagues here: Jason with his affinity for comics and Bill, the copyright wonk.

Not that we need more proof that the RIAA is mad, but apparently their latest target is now suing software and websites that provide song lyrics.

It is always good to remind ourselves from time to time why we do the things we do. Why we get angry about issues of copyright, why censorship is problematic, etc. Why we care about, what this website calls ‘a healthy information ecosystem.” As a response to Jimbo Wales’ (founder of Wikipedia) ten things that [...]

Kieran McCarthy reports about the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva. This is the third meeting; the first meeting was in Geneva, the second in Tunis. The main argument, McCarthy reports, right now is about who will “rule” the internet. According to the report, the US currently controls the internet, by [...]