I'm in the public library (home visiting family and friends for a few days), and I'm quietly laughing so hard that people are craning their necks to see what's on my screen.

I'll admit, I was at first taken aback by Mike's implicit characterization of my opinions on open source and free culture as mere duckspeak, but then I saw Cindy's comment. The last thing I wanted to do was alienate anyone, to bifurcate the issue, or to attack anyone's credibility, but obviously I have contributed to doing all three, and for that I apologize. Mike is pointing out these rhetorical problems because he cares about open source, just as Charlie and I and many others do. So I'll try this again: my opinion, offered sincerely. I realize that I agree with a certain contingent of people, but these are my thoughts too.



Yes, I think that generally, people should use open source software and should allow derivative works of their content if possible, but not because someone's a poseur if he or she doesn't do those things, or that it's an all-or-nothing matter. Of course, there are circumstances under which other choices are more practical. I support open source software and open content because they help to free information--code and content, which I see as overlapping, as I've said elsewhere--and allow everyone (who has the hardware, that is) the opportunity to participate in building upon that information. It enables people who couldn't afford the software otherwise to use it. I know it sounds florid, but I support open content and open source because it's a beautiful, altruistic collaborative vision, a gift economy, people's helping each other by improving the software and content because they can, and want to. I genuinely believe that open content/open source can have a positive effect on knowledge-making on a global scale. [Update: Open source software and open content aren't the things that will be the undoing of global capitalism and make it so that we can live on love and tater pie in a glorious utopia; I don't mean to come across as that enthusiastic. Open source/open content can't, for example, solve the environmental and public health crisis in some developing countries that has been the result of discarded computer hardware.] I'd still argue that this goal is best attained by engaging all three layers of the internet:

The primary strategies for building the core common infrastructure are:

• An open physical layer should be built through the introduction of open wireless networks, or a spectrum commons.
• An open logical layer should be facilitated through a systematic policy preference for open over close protocols and standards, and support for free software platforms that no person or firm can unilaterally control. More important are the reversal or refusal to adopt coercive measures that prefer proprietary to open systems. These include patents on software platforms, and the emerging cluster of paracopyright mechanisms like the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act2 , intended to preserve the industrial business models of Hollywood and the recording industries by closing the logical layer of the Internet.
• An open content layer. Not all content must be open, but intellectual property rights have gone wildly out of control in the past decade, expanding in scope and force like never before. There is a pressing need to roll back some of the rules that are intended to support the twentieth century business models. These laws were passed in response to heavy lobbying by incumbents, and ignored the enormous potential for non market production and decentralized individual production to become central, rather than peripheral, components of our information environment.

See also Frank Field's notes on the stakes in this debate.

I've been thinking more about the copyfight/weblog software debate after seeing the subsequent posts from Charlie, Jeff, and Krista. Krista in particular, although she may not realize it, has really prodded me to think about my thoroughly unexamined use of the term "copyfighter." She definitely thinks it's important to contribute to the commons, as evidenced by the fact that she doesn't do "All Rights Reserved" on her weblog, but she doesn't self-identify as a copyfighter. What is a copyfighter, exactly?

I define it rather broadly: To me, a copyfighter is someone who engages in conversations on authorship and intellectual property, even if the approach is oblique, as I'd consider Mike's to be. Moreover, copyfighters look at our current copyright model--automatic copyright, life + 70 years as soon as the content is put into a fixed medium--and express some kind of qualm about it; they think it should change in some way. To be more specific, I don't think one necessarily has to want to do away with copyright, advocate copyleft, or even support Creative Commons to be a copyfighter. I'd consider someone a copyfighter who thinks we should go back to the Founder's Copyright or, as Lessig has said in The Future of Ideas, the copyright laws we had in the Nixon administration.

I hope this clarifies my prior post. To clarify further, I didn't mean to misrepresent Krista's research in any way, and I'm glad she set me straight on her views. Finally, I don't mean to come across as an open source zealot here. I do think the software overlaps with knowledge-making and content, and I find Benkler's and Lessig's arguments to that effect persuasive, but I'll be the first to point out that I use Windows 98 and will soon be using OS X, both proprietary. In fact, most of the software applications I use are proprietary and, truth be told, I would probably still be using Blogger if it weren't for Charlie, who installed Drupal for me and has given me a lot of tech support.

Charlie is pointing out that there are many copyfighters who aren't using open source software for their weblogs. His point is well-taken; it makes me think of Yochai Benkler's contention that if the internet is really going to be free, it needs to be free at the physical layer, the logical layer, and the content layer. I noticed that there are more copyfighters who don't (yet) use open source software:

• Laurie Johnson
• Samantha Blackmon
• Heather Ford
• Krista K.
• bIPlog
• Jay McCarthy
• Napsterization
• Jim Oliver
• Mister B.S.

Rad Geek and Mike are still with MT too, but I think they'll be switching soon.

I am certainly not trying to pick on anyone here, and I know Charlie isn't either, but this is a kairotic moment for conversations about proprietary and open source software. To paraphrase Matt Barton's hyperbolic words playfully, let's remove our lips from the poisoned suckbottle of proprietary software and switch to the wholesome breast of open source. :)

Update: See subsequent posts here and here.

Aaah. I'm finally in the new place now...not finished unpacking, but everything is there. My muscles are ripped--especially my biceps and quads, but the arms don't look like Linda Hamilton's just yet. Good thing this new apartment complex has an exercise room. 8)

Must get to work on blog collection stuff now, but first I want to thank all the people who helped: Amy, Brooke, Chris, Ryan, Brent, and Jessica. What did I ever do to deserve such great friends? Not too long ago I traded a pint of my blood for help moving. You think I'm kidding? When I was living in Knoxville, I was going to a UU church for a while, and one Sunday they were having a blood drive. At the little coffee-and-cookies fellowship afterward, one of the members of the congregation came up to me and tried to get me to give blood. Okay, it's not that I'm not altruistic, but I'm a bit needle-squeamish, especially when the needle is in my arm for more than two seconds and I have to make a fist over and over again, so I needed some motivation. I told her I'd give blood if she'd help me move later that month. We signed a little cocktail-napkin contract, I delivered the blood, and later that month, she came to help me move and even brought a friend.

Michael Bérubé has provided a poll for Bush supporters, "in order to discover (in the best traditions of Gramscian cultural studies) the continuing appeal of the Bush presidency." Good, funny stuff.

Every time I get my new issue of BUST in the mail, I end up finding things I want, but don't really need, like this t-shirt and especially this other one. I also found books I want and will put on my Amazon wish list but won't buy until after I finish my prelims. Non-prelim-related reading material is strictly off-limits for the next ten weeks. I have to read Aristotle and Denzin & Lincoln and such, but I'd rather read:

• The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction by Rachel Maines (hey, it's from the Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology Series! Maybe I can put that one on my prelims reading list. ;))
• Without a Net : The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class edited by Michelle Tea
• Swerve: Reckless Observations of a Postmodern Girl by Aisha Tyler
• The Fire This Time : Young Activists and the New Feminism edited by Vivien Labaton and Dawn Lundy Martin

I've been following a couple of posts on high-school composition pedagogy with interest: Mister B.S. expresses dismay at essay-writing rules that strike him as arbitrary, and over at Erin's, they're talking about reading assignments and writing. Right now participants in both discussions seem to be trying to find a balance between an old model, characterized as "hard-nosed" and formulaic, and a new model, characterized as "touchy-feely" and ineffectual with regard to really learning how to write essays (see the Onion story that spurred Erin's post). I've nothing to add at this time, but will continue to lurk in the discussions.