So, I was at that ITIC
conference, and thought a bit about the language people use
when talking about standards -- for example, the different
standards people have of what makes something an "open
standard". I think I can identify something like eight
different meanings of "open standard" (and, for that matter,
several different meanings of "standard").
One of the points of contention at the conference was between
consortia and formal standards bodies; some people from the
formal standards world argued that the output of a consortium
was by definition never a "standard".
There was also a panel on patent licensing, and Tim Berners-Lee
was there and stood up a couple of times and confirmed my
great respect for him.
I had a nice time with my family, and I got to see
Annalee, who is a
Knight Fellow
at MIT this year; we went out on the town and ran into my high
school classmate Tom.
I went downtown by myself late one evening and walked around
(dierchomenos gar kai anatheôrôn ta sebasmata,
I suppose). I had dinner by myself at the Boston Public Library
(sitting on the steps). I also got to visit the offices of the
Free Software Foundation and
hang out with Bradley Kuhn
and his cohorts.
Finally, I got to go to Quincy Market with my family and have
lunch there. It's a great experience, reminiscent of the Emeryville
Food Court (except that Quincy Market looks like a piece of
American Revolutionary history and the Emeryville Food Court looks
like an aircraft hangar).
There was a huge storm here, and our plane landed right in the
middle of it, producing what might be the worst turbulence I've
ever felt on a plane. It was really scary. The plane was
shaking back and forth right up to the moment we landed, making
me worry about whether we could miss the runway. But ultimately
everything went well for us.
The same storm, however, caused a few blackouts during the evening,
and probably cause me to lose some e-mail. It also caused the upper
half of the neighbors' tree to fall into our back yard. The view from
my window is much different now. And I learned from Ronnie that the
storm took down both trees in her backyard, one of which is a redwood.
That redwood had been standing in her yard, or what became her yard,
for over a century, and this storm was enough to destroy it. That's
quite a storm, and I feel sorry for Jason and Ronnie, because the
redwood was one of the most wonderful things about their house.
I used to remark that in California it was even possible to have
a redwood in your backyard. Perhaps it's no longer
possible these days.
On my trip out to Boston, I read The Princess Bride;
as Fred said, it's a lot darker than the movie. On my trip back,
I borrowed and read Cory's copy of
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT
Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. The story had two
defects as fiction (which are understandable in that it wasn't
fiction): first, the gamblers didn't use any technology to help
them -- no computers in the shoe or anything like that. Second,
they quit almost as soon as frightening things began to happen to
them.
If there were a movie version, as I understand there may be, I'd
expect them to have computers in their shoes, to spend a long time
creating the user interface, and to try at length to catch the people
who are harassing and threatening them.
When I got back to California, I went to the
Creative Commons
launch party.
As Danny explains:
Lessig, to follow up on
his triumph of getting Milton Friedman and Ursula Le Guin to join
forces in Eldred, got video pledges of support from John Perry
"Intellectual Property is an Oxymoron" Barlow and Jack "I 0wnz0r Y0ur
C0mm0nw3al" Valenti. Together - AT LAST.
It's true. Valenti appeared on tape and gave Creative Commons his
support (if perhaps with a subtext of "I'm glad you created something
to satisfy those weird people who want to give their property away").
I saw literally dozens of people I knew. It was the place to be.
"We can at least say, if nothing else, that copyright law is getting
trendy." (me, to
Drew Clark, on
Eldred v. Ashcroft)
Aaron asked: if we're supposed to give
an equal amount
of money to the EFF when we watch a movie, what is the
EFF supposed to do when it watches a movie?
The question was not just theoretical.
EFF actually did go to watch The Two Towers, which was
followed by an EFF holiday party. I enjoyed the movie, although I
thought there was remarkably little material on Sauron. It might
as well have been The One Tower.
The ending of the battle at Helm's Deep was kind of a cop-out;
there's a cut at one point and then we hear people talking about
the outcome, but we never see it.
Also, if Gandalf can defeat a balrog, why does he fight orcs
hand-to-hand? For that matter, why are they not more afraid of
him? (In the first movie, the orcs themselves all fled from the
balrog. If -- and I know it's a bad assumption -- mightiness is
transitive, or rather susceptible of well-ordering, they ought to
be especially frightened of Gandalf.)
Aaron Swartz came along to
the movie and our party, and I got to talk to him for a little
while. Then he visited me, and was visited in turn by Leonard
and Sumana, the honor of whose collective company I hadn't had
for a while. I spent a fair amount of the time cleaning up, but
I enjoyed the visit. (As you can see from Aaron's web site,
he had an extremely busy schedule in California.)
There's a Finnish civil liberties group called
EFFI (not affiliated with
EFF). At the EFF housewarming, I met
Ville Oksanen of
EFFI. He was wearing one of the
EFFI t-shirts,
and he gave me a copy (it's the "Choose" shirt). I
especially like their copy protection shirt; I feel like
it works better in the U.S. than it does in Finland!
This
is really important, but I'm still trying to understand it.
Elcomsoft was
acquitted,
and we had a party to celebrate! It
wasn't quite as well attended as the party which celebrated
Dmitry's return to Russia (I think it had about 30 people
instead of about 100), but it was a good feeling, and Alex
Katalov, about to return home himself, dropped by. Don and
Tabinda organized the event, which was held at the EFF
office. We posted a few historic "Free Dmitry" flyers for
the occasion.
Don argues that the jury's decision to acquit -- after Judge
Whyte rejected jurisdictional and constitutional arguments --
shows that ordinary Americans think the DMCA has gone too far.
It's hard for me to know what the jury was thinking, but
that interpretation seems especially plausible since the
jury foreman said jurors were troubled at the lack of rights
afforded to readers under the law.
Could it be that they believed that "reading is a right,
not a feature"?
The whole affair lasted almost exactly 17 months (mid-July 2001 to
mid-December 2002). I don't think we'll forget it any time soon.
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Contact: Seth David Schoen
