Dear Boston Vegetarian Society List, The curator of the World Carrot Museum will be joining us at Happy Buddha on a visit from the UK!I've never met anyone who has created a museum about a vegetable but I'm intrigued. I'm also pleased to see that similar ventures exist for vegetables that I enjoy even more than carrots.
(This is mostly reposted from an Advogato article I just submitted).About a year ago, I posted an article on Advogato entitled, Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement. In it, I argued that Creative Commons and the free culture movement were struggling to build a cohesive freedom movement in the way that free and open source software had succeeded in doing by never stopping to define the ground rules of the commons movement. I argued that Free Software built a movement around calls for essential freedoms and against the actions of software producers who failed to live up to this standard. On the other hand, Creative Commons has argued for "some rights reserved" but never explained which rights were unreservable. In the process, they've done the invaluable service of creating a stable of powerful, internationalized licenses. But they failed to build the type social movement that some of us wanted. While this was never their goal, it left some people unsatisfied. In a later version of the essay published in Mute Magazine, I concluded by stating:
Whether in unison or cooperating in separate groups, it is time for those those of us that feel strongly about freedom to discuss, decide, and move forward with our own free information movement built upon a standard of freedom. When we have defined free information in terms of essential freedoms, a subset of Creative Commons works and a subset of Creative Commons licenses will provide tools and texts through which a social movement can be built.I'm thrilled to say that that day is now within sight. A few weeks ago, Larry Lessig introduced me to Erik M ller, a Wikipedian who had read my article and was planning on launching the same project that I had been planning. It only seemed sensible to collaborate. Today, we have launched a draft of a Free Content and Expression Definition online at freedomdefined.org. The website is a wiki and we welcome feedback, suggestions, and alternative versions of the document. So far, we've have decided to stick closely to the freedoms of free software but are actively interested in updating these to be more relevant for other types of creative works. Of course, anything, even the name, can be changed at this point. To guide us through the project of debating and further refining a definition are four moderators who will ultimately be called upon to resolve disputes and disagreements about what the definition should and will say. These moderators are myself, Erik M ller, Creative Commons General Counsel Mia Garlick, and Wikimedia Foundation Trustee Angela Beesley. You can view the announcement of the definition, please take a look at: To view the definition itself, please visit:
Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Creative Commons and Professor of Law at Stanford Law School: "In a world where DRM has become ubiquitous, we need to ensure that the ecology for creativity is bolstered, not stifled, by technology. We applaud Sun's efforts to rally the community around the development of open-source, royalty-free DRM standards that support "fair use" and that don't block the development of Creative Commons ideals."Lessig's position seems to be that DRM is bad and should not exist. But in a world where it does exist, he thinks that not-quite-so-bad DRM is better than the alternatives. Is that the sort of message we want to be sending? The fact that the software is "open source" is hardly good enough if the purpose of the software is to take away users freedom -- in precisely the way that DRM does. It doesn't help that EFF has already spoken out against this project. Lessig is on the board of directors of both EFF and FSF. I think it is smart for members of either organization who are opposed to DRM, even when it's sweetened up, to contact those organizations and let them know how you feel. On the OMC website, there is a photo of two young attractive people listening to a single pair of headphones. Apparently, the people in the picture need to share a single pair of headphones because the Open Media Commons rights management system won't allow them to share the digital media itself.
As your Representative in Congress, I want to share with you some of the work I have been doing to assist orphans in underdeveloped countries.I grew up in a family that adopted several orphans from underdeveloped countries so I'm glad to see this happening -- I really am. But what really makes me happy is that I get to hear from my elected representative unsolicited -- for the first time, no less -- advertising his work on such a controversial subject. He seems perfectly willing to stand up for what he believes in, even if it means that he loses the crucial anti-developing-nation-orphan vote.
Next.