in the "no kidding" file

Now what woudl Bordieu say about that? Oh, and John Ashcroft's idea of "liberty" helps make the point about Bush (and his cabinet) being out of touch with his fellow citizens. See also the Salon for a story I thought was called "A Blue Burqa for Justice," but I can't find any evidence of it anywhere. When Google fails to find it, does that mean it never really happened?   8:13:42 AM      comment

Who owns ideas?

All Hail Creative Commons "In a boon to the arts and the software industry, Creative Commons will make available flexible, customizable intellectual-property licenses that artists, writers, programmers and others can obtain free of charge to legally define what constitutes acceptable uses of their work." [The Shifted Librarian via Tomalak's Realm]]

One more thing from Lessig's most recent book that the article doesn't make explicit is that not only has Congress extended the terms of copyright enormously, but they've made the vast bulk of those extensions in the last 40 years. As Lessig writes, "While Congress changed the term of copyright once in the first hundred years of copyright, and once again in the next fifty years, it has extended the term of subsisting copyrights eleven times in the past forty years" (The Future of Ideas 197). Knowing that, and after reading the above article, is it possible to doubt that corporate interests are driving this insane abuse of copyright law?   7:42:23 AM      comment