Category: culture-and-politics

Rights will make you rich or how to Boag?

I went to Rights will make you rich at one dot zero. Without going into details, it was a interesting debate once the presentations (1) (2) were out of the way although I have no idea what on earth the PSP document is. And one of the highlights of the night was a guy called Saw who was trying to make a point about something and decided
to storm out in frustration. I didn't quite get the point he was making but it was something to do with freesoftware and opensource. I'm sure it was well thought-out but he left before we got a chance to talk. The rest of the evening wasn't very note worthy and I was too tired to contribute anything to the conversation after the BBC Innovation Forum.

Luckly the Boagworld meetup was far better.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Lawrence Lessig at the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress

Lessig on stage ay 23c3

If you have not had a chance to watch Lawrence Lessig at the 23rd Chaos Communication Congress, go download it now (torrent, http, ftp).

Lawrence Lessig also goes into some depth about the reasoning behind the non-commercial restriction in creative commons. It comes down to freeriding and lessig does a good job linking the aims of the GPL's copyleft type license with the aims of non-commercial. My good friend Dave, argues the downfall of NC creative commons licenses all the time. Well Dave I got some new ammo in my back pocket now.

Lessig also near the end suggests that the war going on with culture is more important that free software and that free software is just part of something much greater. Lessig is somewhat right, but I don't think this will go down well in a room full of hackers. Lessig finally finishes on the debate for the end of copyright, saying we can have those in debates internally over beer. At the moment they cloud the main issue too much.

The first question is about NC in CC and GPL. The questioner points out that Stallman always talks about moral responsibility not freeriding. Lessig suggests the same questions which made up the GPL for free software need to be raised in the different communities of photography, wiki's etc. So we don't get people from the free software community telling photographers whats best for their community (dave take note).

Its also worth noting there are a lot of good talks which can be downloaded too.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

The rate of change in education?

Rates of Change

I found this via the are you paying attention blog. The person behind this has a point, and sums it up so well with this beautifully crafted graph.

It doesn’t matter how much <Insert School District Here> grows (or plans to grow) over 5 years if everything outside that school is changing 10x that speed.

2006: My Tasks With Computer
1. Instant messaging (In Game & Out of Game)
2. Audio (Music, Streaming Audio, Podcasts, Conferencing)
3. Gaming
4. RSS Feeds
5. Web Publishing
6. Word Processing
7. Email

1996: My Tasks With Computer
1. Email
2. Word Processing

Most schools ban instant messaging, audio, gaming, web publishing, and email….leaving computers for a) word processing/productivity and b) research. Roughly the same stuff we were doing in 1996.

Although I understand the reasoning behind banning the other activities at schools, it certainly doesn't help encourage young adults into courses around computers and the internet. Although I guess most young adults will be drawn into the industry and further education through there own home computer setup (hopefully). Lets face it if computers were just about email and word processing most of us would have gone elsewhere to express ourselves. Where's the social aspect of computers? Where's the self expression?
They maybe young but were stifling their creativity surely?

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Great justification for the future of Digital Britain

Guys talk about Volume at the V and A

Victor Keegan from the Guardian, pins down a great argument for the TV license rise. Here's some of the best bits.

The BBC needs to be cut down to size because it uses the certainty of its licence fee to undermine entrepreneurial initiatives in the private sector. That is the accusation used by many of its rivals as they try to prevent the BBC from getting an above-inflation rise in its current licence application, a decision on which is imminent. The reality is rather different, as two recent examples illustrate.

Back in May the BBC – Radio 1, actually – was prescient in launching a pop concert in the now-fashionable Second Life virtual world that attracted 6,000 people. The spin-off from the event is credited with tripling the number of SL participants and helping to change it from a geek's secret paradise into a mainstream phenomenon. Justin Bovington, chief executive of Rivers Run Red, the enterprising Soho company that employs 22 people to build projects in SL, reckons that only the BBC could have done that because
private sector companies wouldn't have taken the risk.

The main UK global media brand online is the BBC (with the Guardian running second). If the UK wants to breed companies that can rival YouTube or the new wave of online media such as NowPublic.com (which utilises 52,000 story-hungry cameraphone-equipped citizen journalists) then the most obvious organisation in terms of resources and a culture of innovation is the BBC. Why can't the politicians throw themselves behind one of the few global stars we have instead of finding reasons to cut it back?

No one knows what will happen when the digital revolution is turning whole industries upside down. The latest instalment is this week's news that the founders of Skype, the free internet telephone calls company, plans to launch a global near high-definition broadband television service.

At a time when a small cup of coffee at Starbucks costs £1.90, the BBC's licence fee of £131.50 a year for colour (36p a day) or only £44 for black and white (12p a day) is amazing value for money. If the government, through the licence fee review, underfunds the BBC during this critical period, then it will truly deserve the contempt of history.

Indeed! This certainly makes me proud to work for the BBC. This is also one of many reasons to have projects like the Backstage and Innovation labs. We're a publicly funded company and everything we do is to the benefit of the public now and into the future. If the government does (in my view) the right thing, Digital Britain will be a great place to live and work. But obviously we can't go it alone, this is why I find things like Vecosys moving on from techcrunch, Girl geekdinners expension plans extremely interesting. 2007 also seems to be the year when conferences and events in england (at least) grow massively. February looks to be very busy and with companies like Chinwag launching their own events, its certainly looks like there will be something of interest for everyone involved in Future Media and Technology (I'm dumping new media in 2007).

I was also thinking the other day about the sheer diversity of the UK compared to elsewhere. Bruce Sterling wrote a nice piece in Make 07 titled the Interventionists. About how the tech geeks and fine artists are jostling onto the same page. After reading it I thought Dorkbot London and started to reflect on some of the other groups which already occupy the UK. The UK government has also made it clear they want to help drive more of them as this is critical to enterprising britain.

So in summary, I think 2007 will be great for the reasons of people coming together more than ever. The BBC will have a big role to play in this but maybe more to highlight whats already going on elsewhere.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Code v.2.0 launched today

Code 2.0 book

Lawrence Lessig just launched Code version 2.0 today and best of all he released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

So Code v2 is officially launched today. Some may remember Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, published in 1999. Code v2 is a revision to that book — not so much a new book, as a translation of (in Internet time) a very old book. Part of the update was done on a Wiki. The Wiki was governed by a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. So too is Code v2.

Thus, at http://codev2.cc, you can download the book. Soon, you can update it further (we're still moving it into a new wiki). You can also learn a bit more about the history of the book, and aim of the revision. And finally, there are links to buy the book — more cheaply than you likely can print it yourself.

Lessig is already asking for remixes, which is great because I'm certainly going to convert it so it works on my phone soon.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Petition to Ban within government-funded schools, the promotion of any faith or religion

Ship of fools

I'm not keen on Bans but, this certainly sounds like a worthy cause.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ban within government-funded schools the promotion or practice of any particular faith or religion.
Submitted by Quentin Brodie Cooper of UK Brights

Faith-based or sect schools encourage and propagate divisions within our society.

Schools should be places where our children are taught to think about the world around them and come to their own conclusions. In short, they should be taught, not only about the profusion of religions and faiths but also about how moral and socially responsible lives can be led without them; rather than, at a time before they have sufficiently developed critical faculties, being indoctrinated.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

BBC issues recently

BBC TV Centre

The BBC has been getting quite a lot of attention recently. I obviously can't say anything from a BBC perpective only my own personal view. So in lawyer speak, these are the views of myself and myself alone. They are not the and should not be taken as the official view of the BBC.

So the first and most public is the announcement about the Memo of Understanding with Microsoft. Via Slashdot

Microsoft has signed a memorandum of understanding with the BBC for 'strategic partnerships' in the development of next-generation digital broadcasting techniques. They are also speaking to other companies such as Real and Linden Labs. Windows Media Centre platform, Windows Live Messenger application and the Xbox 360 console have all been suggested as potential gateways for BBC content. It is unclear how this impacts on existing BBC research projects such as Dirac, although it is understood that the BBC would face heavy criticism if its content was only available via Microsoft products.

Slashdot has lots of critism and we didn't get a glowing review in the Guardian either. Dave's been sending me updates from the Free Software foundation UK list but Miles outlays a view point which I think quite a few people have (I assumed this was ok to publish miles?).

Any technology alliance the BBC enters into with a commercial software and DRM vendor should explicitly define open standards and open content. At the present time, where DRM implementations are not interoperable because of commercial competition in the DRM market, and software vendors' desire to dominate that market, producing proprietary and DRMed content locks the partnership in, and locks consumers in. Whilst it may be legitimate for a company to do this, a broadcaster that is funded by a mandatory public subscription (the license fee), and which has, in effect, as a direct result, a quasi-monopoly, should not abuse its position, and shaft a public which has no choice.

The cynic in me believes broadcasters are doing this on purpose – because they want “IP TV” to fail so they can prolong their existing business models.

Certainly these are very strong words.

And on to the other issue… Thanks to Bahi for this heads up. There's been talk about the BBC ripping off Flickr photographs. Ripping off and Scandal are very strong words indeed but if you do actually follow the Scotland Flickr discussion. The bit which got everyones backs up, lies in this part of what the editor of BBC Scotland says.

I wondered if anyone would be willing to give me advance permission to use their pictures as and when the need arises? We'd still always send you a message telling you we'd used a picture and we'd credit you in the alt tag (and possibly the caption as well).

All I can say is this was always going to be a difficult thing to explain.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

Geek and Geekhag Podcast 13 – Race and interracial stereotypes

Me and Sarah did a podcast last night about some comments on her blog recently.The post was about race and interracial stereotypes and centres around a piece in the guardian over a year ago (march 2005). Now someones called werdz has decided to write a comment and get back at Sarahs comments on the original guardian article. Sarah felt it best to reply by a podcast.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]

The US on the UK Grime Scene

I would never have thought I would be linking to a BBC blog but this short piece from some American show (which was uploaded to YouTube) is a interesting look at the UK Grime scene. Oh did I mention Mistajam now has a BBC Blog? I'm aware of the grime scene but stay well clear because I'm not the biggest fan of this type of music. But I do respect where this is coming from, even if its lost its way a little. There is a really good point made about the true differences of UK and US hiphop culture. People don't have 23 inch rims on there cars and wear diamonds simply because they can't afford it and they would be robbed. Yep, I'm certainly hearing that. I wouldn't even pull my ipaq on the train ride into peckham sometimes.

Comments [Comments]
Trackbacks [0]