Looks like the US Copyright Office has denied requests for a re-hearing on the issue of the new royalties structure for internet radio stations. For those who haven’t been following the issue, the RIAA in early March successfully got the US Copyright Office to accept a new set of exorbitant song royalty fees for netradio…
Category: Information Society
Fair use of machinima for press story?
IANAL, for sure. On a couple of occasions I have found some of my machinima videos being used in television and web newscasts about Second Life or politics. Much of my work is licensed under a Creative Commons non-commercial / sharealike / attribution 2.0 license. So I have no major problem with my videos being…
Yahoo announces “first” online-only presidential debates
e-Democracy expert Steven Clift sends along the press release that Yahoo!, Slate Magazine and the Huffington Post have teamed up to organize a series of online-only debates between presidential candidates. Steven corrects the press release, which claims that this will be the "first ever" online-only debate between presidential candidates, which actually occurred way back in…
Does Web2.0 make us more engaged or divided?
I went to a cool panel on “Democratization of the Networked Public Sphere” at the New School featuring Danah Boyd, Ethan Zuckerman and Trebor Scholz. So many thought provoking ideas flying all around the room, I was dizzy by the end. Ethan’s talk was closest to my heart, talking about the potential of networked, remixed…
Ok, Twitter is pretty neat
I think I am coming off the fence and deciding that I like Twitter. For those that don’t know, Twitter is a creative melding of instant message, mini-blogging, and SMS texting technologies into one ridiculously simple package. You basically set up a free account, associate your favorite instant message and/or cell phone SMS text service,…
Google Earth + Darfur: a powerful tech mash-up
The US Holocaust Museum has teamed up with Google Earth to offer a startling and powerful overlay of the region of Darfur onto Google’s interactive earth map. You can see where all the of the refugee camps are, which villages have been destroyed, view photos, and read testimony from people in the region. I have…
My first foray into online community: the BBS
I was feeling nostalgic reading through old diaries from the 90s, when I ran across this entry about my explorations of bulletin board systems (BBS) while I was living in Washington DC. For those too young to remember, we used to have to dialup with our 14.4 mbaud modems to connect to these somewhat clandestine…
I’m a Wii Pro – is that cool or sad?
I am disproportionately proud of myself for achieving "pro" status at Wii bowling. Perhaps because I have always thought I could be a really good bowler in real life if I applied myself and took a few lessons. Of course there is no where to go now but down so I have a disincentive to…
Vote for Your Favorite Net2 Innovation Fund Projects
Jennifer over at TechSoup sent me news about a cool initiative to fund non-profit tech projects. The NetSquared Year Two conference is set for May 29-30 in San Jose, and they are looking to fund 20 new tech projects for social good. 150 projects were submitted to their competition, competing for $100,000 cash from the…
Podcasters invade Manhattan!
I spent today at PodCamp NYC, which was quite an interesting event that I decided to attend at the very last minute last night. The "unconference" gathered around 400 podcasters and other interested folks to talk about issues facing podcast producers like intellectual property rights, monetizing their work, and increasing your listening audience. As a…