Sebastian Keil of Speaking English Podcast reviews my halfings book, My 100 Million Dollar Secret. He likes it and recommends it to people learning English because the vocabulary isn’t too hard and the print size is good. And he wears a funny hat. What could be better! [Tags: my_100_million_dollar_secret books reviews young_adults sebastian_kiel]

As an ace marketer, I probably should have mentioned that you can join the almost two dozen satisfied customers by buying it at lulu.com or Amazon.com, or you can read it online for free or download it as a PDF or Word file for free.

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John Palfrey says we don’t know how the Internet might affect democracy, but there lots of possibilities. He lays them out. [I’m typing quickly trying to capture the outline. As always, I’m missing stuff and getting it wrong.]

First, it might affect participatory democracy by providing open information enviornments, making new networks, enabling tools for individual activists, a productivity tool for campaigners, and attracting new participants. On the other hand, it might provide too much information, it can fragment us (“The Daily Me”), the participation can be watered down, it limits participation to those with access, some states are instituting censorship (cf. the ONI project), and maybe we should be jumping to “postdemocratic” order. So, maybe we’ll see refinements; the context matters a lot and it depends “a ton on what baseline you choose.” That is, if you’re only asking if participatory culture makes demcoracy better, that’s an easy bar. But maybe we should be aiming higher.

Second, acadmics says that the real story is about economic democracy and the emergence of a stronger middle class, and Doc Searls’ “Vendor Relationship Management.”

Third, academics also talk about semiotic democracy, e.g., control of cultural goods, with meaning created by many, not by the few. More YouTube and Second Life, less Disney. But (he asks), will people participate? Will we just create the old structures online? And won’t new intermediaries emerge to decide what we see?

John lists takeaways:

The Web is about creativity, innovation, and greater power at the edges.

This is a global phenomenon.

Big media companies generally have no idea how to deal with participatory democracy.

The legal and political battle over the future of the Internet is where a lot of this will play out. The outcome is not assured.

This conference is about where theory meets practice.

Q: First, participatory culture and democracy are non-partisan. Second, someone has to tell us what’s true or else we’re liable to end up with fascism, racism, anti-semitism, etc.
A: Something to talk about this afternoon. [Tags: beyondbroadcast07 john_palfrey media democracy politics berkman]

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In a bid to make it hard for its readers to feel any sense of participation in the Oscars, and possibly to prevent us from mischievously spelling “DiCaprio” “DiCrapio,” The trademark-and-copyright besotted Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences makes it difficult to get the list of nominees in a form we can munge the way we want. (No, pdf does not count.) So, I liberated the data and have posted it here. It’s a very plain HTML format, with span metadata for nominees, categories and moredata. [Tags: oscars]

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Last night I was just going to watch a few minutes of the documentary about the boycotting of the Dixie Chicks, Shut Up and Sing , but I ended up watching the whole thing, going to bed too late. It’s an imperfect documentary about imperfect people, which is why I loved it.

I didn’t used to be in the DC’s demographic. I’m a totally stereotypical northeastern liberal Jew, predictable down to my preference for iceberg lettuce and whining about sunburn. And that means I don’t much like country music (although I was brought up on folk music). I only started paying attention to the DC’s once their fans turned against them because Natalie Maines, the lead singer, uttered a single line critical of our president. Now, some celebrities have been brought down by using a single word, but generally those words have indicated an intolerance that we (thankfully) no longer tolerate. But Maines only said she’s ashamed of our president. That’s well within the range of political discourse. Economically punishing people you disagree with makes democracy worse, not better, imo — although I know many of you disagree. (As for Maines criticizing the president while outside of the US, the notion that we need to put on a fake, unified face for our allies strikes me as being ashamed of what’s best about democracy.)

The documentary makes it clear that Maines is a big mouth. Nothing wrong with that. Heck, some of my best friends and bloggers are big mouths. She said that one sentence from the heart, in the heat of the moment — London had just seen its largest-ever anti-war demonstration — and, as she acknowledges, to get a rise from the audience. Life is complex, and the documentary’s willingness to acknowledge this is a real plus.

Seeing the DC’s embrace the consequences of Maines’ single sentence, growing as people, citizens and musicians, is moving precisely because the growth is contingent and painful. This isn’t a matter of riding some bromide. They feel their way. They’re pushed and they react, sometimes with anger, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with their instruments. They may be insanely talented millionaire musicians, but it’s easy to connect with them as bullies shove them off their accustomed path.

The DC’s are great musicians and singers. I would never have found them if their politics hadn’t snagged me. I am, I believe, part of their new demographic.

(Disclosure: I got sent a free copy of the DVD as part of a blogging marketing campaign. I was planning on renting it anyway.)

[Tags: dixie_chicks movies free_speech music country_music politics ]

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SJSU JMC163 New Media in Journalism School of Journalism & Mass Communications (yes, that’s the name of the blog — I suspect it’s class-related), has a nice example of an audience for a particular TV show — the BBC’s “North & South” — forming itself into a conversation “with a voice” that worked around the BBC’s attempt to moderate it. [Tags: media cluetrain bbc ]

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No, it’s not a place where you can get free digital downloads. Rather, it’s software for creating your own storefront for selling your music, documents, used Powerpoints, whatever. It’s from the Web’s favorite musician, BradSucks, and uses Amazon’s incredibly cheap S3 storage service. BradSucks’ store is DRM-free, of course.

You can see it in action here. Or you can download BradSuck’s software here, so you can install it on your own site. (And while you’re checking out BradSucks’ store, you can listen to his music for free, and then go buy a copy of his album.) [Tags: bradsucks music drm retail amazon ecommerce everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

We took a two-hour docent-led tour of The National Portrait Gallery. Tom Thompson, the docent, knows everything and can put it in perspective. I’m a sucker for portraits.

The three-paragraph write-ups pasted next to each presidential portrait are surprisingly frank and overall quite negative about our fearless leaders. Surprising and refreshing.

Almost forty years later, it still find it difficult to watch the videotape of Nixon appealing to the “silent majority” to support his secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.

The National Gallery of Art has a special exhibit of its Rembrandt sketches and etchings. The craft almost overwhelms the art. (Simon Schama’s Rembrandt’s Eyes is an amazing, eye-opening work.)

The Library of Congress is closed on Sundays. It makes for a brisk walk up Capitol hill, though. We’ll go today, if it’s open on Presidents’ Day.

The History Boys movie was quite enjoyable, although less substantial than I’d thought, less surprising, and less about the teacher it thinks it’s about than it is. (The “academic” lesson it teaches is the same as in David R. Williams’ little book of advice to students, Sin Boldly , [Tags: washington_dc dc travel rembrandt national_portrait_gallery]

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My wife and I are in DC as tourists for a few days. Some notes…

If you’re going to visit the WWII memorial and the Vietnam memorial, do them in chronological order. The WWII is a big, open space with nothing to hang feelings or memories on. The Vietnam memorial — which, amazingly, I’d never been to before — is heart-breaking. No matter what we thought of that war, we all feel the full stop of those young lives.

The Hirshhorn is a truly enjoyable art museum. I usually conk out aesthetically after 45 minutes, but we did this museum from its opening hirsh to its final horn.

Because I am a mature individual, I refrained from yelling profanities at the White House.
I’ve never liked its palatial air.

We had a delicious Indian dinner at Nivana at 1810 K Street, NW. It’s completely vegetarian, and much of it is vegan. The owners are very friendly and will tell you anything you want to know about Jainism.

Disturbing fact: Some of the wines they serve are marked vegan because, the owners say, most wines are “filtered through fish.”

“Only Human” is a Spanish movie about a Jew who brings home a Palestinian fiance. We went because the Washington Post claimed it was laugh-out-loud funny. Eh. It had a couple of chuckles, but otherwise was just predictably silly. “My Big, Neurotic Jewish-Palestinian Engagement.”

[Tags: washington_dc dc vegetarian travel]

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Wendy Seltzer, law professor and Berkman Fellow, posted the snippet of the Superbowl where they warn viewers that it’s against the law to describe the game. Wendy posted this for her law class. And, yes, the NFL has sent a take-down notice to YouTube.

Wendy is a former EFF lawyer. She’s sending a counter-notification to YouTube.

(Note: This blog post is copyrighted. You may not reuse it, link to it, describe it, talk about it, think about it, or remember it without the explicit permission of the NFL Joho. Ok, Joho says you may.) [Tags: copyright nfl youtube wendy_seltzer superbowl irony berkman]

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Jim Moore (a friend and former Berkman Fellow) received a msg from YouTube that they’ve removed a video of his at the legal request of Viacom. Had Jim posted a Viacom program he’d recorded? Had he posted a clip of his nephew performing a song owned by Viacom? Nah, it was a 30-second video of Jim and some friends eating ribs at restaurant in Somerville. That’s all. Viacom complained to YouTube, and YouTube removed the “offending” video. No explanation of why. No query first. Nothing but one big bully of a company flicking its mighty finger Jim’s way. Oh yeah, the DMCA is a fine law.

John Palfrey explains (and as a Harvard Law professor, he kinda understands this stuff) that Jim is entitled to file a counter notice. In fact, John says, Viacom may owe Jim money if it falsely accused him (as it did) of violating its copyright rights. John wonders if a court might decide that Viacom is papering the house with these take-down notices.

Yo, Democrats, care to take a good long look at the DMCA? Or is there not enough light for that inside Hollywood’s pocket? [Tags: dmca copyright copyleft John_palfrey jim_moore youtube]

Five minutes later: I wonder if Viacom’s spider saw “Redbone” in the title of Jim’s video and thought that it was a clip of Leon Redbone. Does Viacom own Leon Redbone?

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