I joined up with Orkut
and have been having a nice time there. It has a lot in
common with Friendster,
but is faster and has more functionality. (It also seems
to have more of my friends.) Perhaps most
amusing is to see the pictures people choose for Orkut
communities. (At dinner recently, some of us suggested that
Orkut's communities aren't really communities. I don't
remember what we thought they should be called instead.)
I'm about to leave for Los Angeles to hear oral argument
in MGM v. Grokster.
I went with Kieran and Duncan to the San Francisco Antiquarian
Book, Print, and Paper Fair (not to be confused with the California
International Antiquarian Book Fair, which is in Los Angeles this
year and which I'll be attending on Friday). We looked briefly at
a lot of books, and also at many old maps of San Francisco.
Although it was fairly evident there, I didn't actually think about
the saying habent sua fata libelli so much at the fair as I
did the day before the fair. I never imagined that I would write a
letter and send it across the country and that, four years later, a
separate copy of the letter and I would make our ways simultaneously
right across the street from the letter's destination
where, having largely forgotten about it, I would unexpectedly
read it over again.
When I first wrote there, "2000 Florida Avenue, NW" was as
random and meaningless to me as it could possibly have been.
(For all I could imagine it, it might as well have been in
Florida.) But on Friday I discovered, to my very great
astonishment, that my letter had found its way there a second
time by another route and for another reason, so that
I felt, perhaps more than ever before, that "books have their
own destinies".
Last week, I went to Washington, D.C, for a "hoedown" meeting with the FCC
and various industry and public interest people. One interesting
result of the research for that meeting was the observation that
FM radio is really much better quality than people believe. If
received and digitized with reasonable home equipment, FM can
compare favorably with compressed music downloaded from the
Internet.
There is still a very strong mythology about how analog is bad
and digital is good. This is ridiculous. (It's probably worse
than the uncritical idea that natural things are healthy and artificial
things are unhealthy.) Many
digital recordings or transmissions are appreciably worse in every
way than many analog recordings or transmissions. The real issue
here is that, because analog and digital have different properties
in some other ways, some people feel threatened by the ability to
convert effectively between the analog and digital worlds.
But it isn't because one is good and one is bad.
This week, I went to the 9th Circuit's Pasadena venue with Wendy to hear oral
argument in MGM v. Grokster.
My colleague Fred von Lohmann, representing the publishers of the
Morpheus file-sharing software, did a simply brilliant job.
It's exciting to hear Fred talk about the
Betamax doctrine (in person or in court). He should get a television
show where he just discusses the Betamax case.
Particularly gratifying was Judge Noonan's view of the subtlety of
copyright questions. When a music industry lawyer directed a lot of
rhetoric against file-sharing networks, Noonan became impatient and
tried to bring the discussion back to the law:
Let me say what I think your problem is. You can use these harsh terms,
but you are dealing with something new, and the question is, does the
statutory monopoly that Congress has given you reach out to that
something new? And that's a very debatable question. You don't solve
it by calling it "theft". You have to show why this court should extend
a statutory monopoly to cover the new thing. That's your problem.
Address that if you would. And I have no use for this abusive language.
(Transcription adapted from Copyfight's,
based on the 9th Circuit's audio recording.)
As we walked out of the courthouse, the rain stopped and a
rainbow appeared in the sky -- the first time in my whole life
that I saw a complete rainbow from the ground. It was
beautiful. Someone even got a picture of Fred standing under it.
In describing the argument to a friend, I couldn't resist
extending my Fair Seuss poem a little:
I subsequently got to see
(in ancient halls in Pasade-
na) argument about M.G.-
M.'s case for contributory
infringement, heard before just three
of judges on the vast 9th C.:
the question, whether knowingly
providing "tools of piracy"
(they call them that, and sneeringly,
but I think it's just "P2P")
gives rise to liability,
absent a capability
to know whether each MP3
infringes on someone's copy-
right -- or if we are truly free
to use the freedoms of Sony.
The cause was argued brilliantly
by Fred, a senior attorney,
who, before all the gallery,
set forth the many policy
reasons why the whole history
of that case and of law decree
a judgment for the appellee.
To which I might add, with regard to the rainbow: "(It seemed the
powers in heav'n agree.)"
On the same trip to Southern California, I got to visit a
conference put on the Intellectual Property Section of the
California Bar Association. It was a CLE conference, but
it doesn't seem that I'm eligible to collect any CLE credit.
(Nonetheless, my legal education continued.)
One particularly exciting bit was a panel featuring Emery
Simon, Eben Moglen, and Kevin McBride, the latter a lawyer
for the SCO Group (and brother of SCO CEO Darl McBride).
I very much enjoyed hearing the latter two talk about free
software for a while before the panel, and I even had the
opportunity to meet Mr. McBride and talk to him briefly about
free software and EFF's work. Professor Moglen made a
great showing on the panel.
I saw a movie called Value Added Cinema about product
placement. Thanks to Rob Courtney for pointing out that it would
be playing. There is something eerie about the thought that the
brands you see in a major motion picture were all put there on purpose.
The most wonderful surprise of everything I saw at the
37th California
International Antiquarian Book Fair (not to be confused with
the San Francisco fair I attended last week
-- I made a separate
overnight trip to Los Angeles, my second time there this week,
to attend this other fair) was something I never thought I would
see in my lifetime: the only known manuscript of "La Biblioteca
de Babel", "The Library of Babel", by Jorge Luis Borges. It was
written in Borges's own hand, with the letter "t" crossed at the
top, and it started with the English epigraph "By this art you
may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters" and proceeded
(in Spanish)
The universe (which others call the library) ...
The dealer who was exhibiting it followed up on my shock by
showing me the manuscript of "El jardín de senderos
que se bifurcan" ("The Garden of Forking Paths") and then a
couple of other Borges manuscripts for slightly less famous
stories. I was floored.
The likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see even the
first manuscript was certainly worth the entire trip, even if
I hadn't seen signed original works of Feynman, Crick, and
others, to say nothing of the first printed edition of Homer
(unfortunately not signed). Dayenu!
The idly curious may wonder what the world's only manuscript
of one of the greatest stories of one of the past century's
greatest writers of stories costs. I did buy something
at the fair, and I almost bought something else. The Borges
manuscript costs 20,000 times what I bought and 4,000 times
what I almost bought.
What I did buy was a print
of Arthur Szyk's depicting Rabbi Hillel and his famous summary of the Law.
What I almost bought was a single leaf of a medieval psalter
(My father taught me that the people who disbind whole books to
sell them leaf by leaf do wrong and should be shunned. The
dealer who displayed the medieval leaves for sale, well aware
of the prevalence of this teaching, had a prominent sign swearing
that he was not responsible for the solitary condition of the leaves
he was selling. When I saw this, I imagined a sign on a transplant
doctor's wall: All organ donors died of natural causes!)
This week I stayed at three hotels and one motel: the Four Seasons in Beverly
Hills, a Marriott (if I remember correctly) in Pasadena, the Super 8 in
Inglewood (nearby LAX), and the Four Seasons in Austin. (By the way, that's
three separate trips away from home, not two, with 6 flight segments and
900 miles by car!)
It was quite a study in contrasts. I'd never even been inside a Four Seasons
before, and then two in one week with a Super 8 in between!
Despite this, I still haven't experienced the real extremes of
paid overnight lodging in the U.S. I'm told there are several hotels in
San Francisco alone that are fancier than the Four Seasons, and, at the other
end (speaking of works I saw at the L.A. book fair), "there's plenty of
room at the bottom".
One unusual feature of both Four Seasons hotels was that
BayTSP's CEO Mark Ishikawa was
present at both of them.
Another great restaurant in San Francisco is the House of Nanking,
919 Kearny (at Columbus). I went there in a group led by Praveen
last week and had one of the best meals I've ever enjoyed in a
Chinese restaurant. The House of Nanking is well-regarded by
revewiers, and its reputation seems to be well-deserved.
Maybe I should make a list of restaurants I like in the Bay Area.
As is well known, Mayor Newsom directed city offices to begin marrying
same-sex couples in San Francisco late last week. I was walking down
the street in the Mission on Friday and heard people talking about the
scene at City Hall: they were saying that people from all kinds of city
offices had volunteered to work overtime, to come in on the weekend, to be
deputized as assistant clerks or commissioners so that they could marry
as many people as humanly possible. To hear the passersby tell it, the
staff down at City Hall had risen as one with joy at Mayor Newsom's
instruction and volunteered to do everything in their power to carry it
out.
I imagined volunteers passing Gatorade to weary clerks who had been
on their feet marrying people for fourteen hours straight (no pun
intended). It must have been like a marathon, I thought.
Saturday was Valentine's Day. I already had a plan to go out during
the day (I don't type on Saturdays, so I have free time as the world
understands free time) and it struck me from the front-page newspaper
headlines that there was history being made in my own city. So I
thought I would go down to City Hall and see it happen.
Zack decided to join me, and we took a long walk -- from our home in
the Mission all the way to City Hall, and thereafter all the way to
the Castro, and thereafter all the way home, with additional detours
on foot for meals and buying pencils (which is a story in itself).
We made it to City Hall by mid-afternoon and right away saw the TV
trucks outside: first CNN and then the local station KRON-4. The main
entrance to City Hill had been fitted with a red carpet and people were
milling around with cameras looking absolutely ecstatic.
Zack ran up to a couple of men who were wearing "freedom to marry"
stickers and holding a lot of paperwork and grinning. "Did you two
just get married in there?" Zack asked.
"Yes, yes we did!" said the men.
"Congratulations!" said Zack, shaking their hands vigorously.
"Congratulations! Happy wedding!"
I ran up and shook their hands too and thought that we had already
seen history. "We came up from Los Angeles today as soon as we
heard the news", one of the men said. They must have gotten on the
road at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning -- with, as we could see, their
entire immediate families.
We proceeded around the building to the other entrance
to see what was going on. A police or sheriff's officer was standing
at the back of an incredibly long line that stretched just shy of
half-way around the building. He was arguing with some people at
the back of the line. To be precise, they were arguing with him and
he was apologizing to them. "The line is closed, ma'am. It's not
my decision, I'm just carrying out the orders I was given. The end
of the line is there and nobody else is allowed to line up today.
You can come back in the morning."
Two women in tears were clearly the most upset at this. "The Supervisor
said I could still line up, he said we should just get in line. I just
talked to the Supervisor and he said I would still be allowed to
line up." (San Francisco City Council members are called Supervisors.
It's like saying "the Senator". It's like saying "Officer, the
Senator told me I could get married here". It's a heavy invocation of
higher authority around here.)
"Ma'am, it's not up to me. I was told to close the line here."
"You're saying we can't get married today. You're saying we can't
go in and get married. I don't understand."
"I'm sorry, ma'am. Excuse me, sir, the line is closed for today. No one
else can get in line. That's it. No sir, the line is closed."
We walked around the side of the line and saw hundreds of same-sex
couples in all states of dress (punk to tuxedo to family heirloom
dress to just-off-the-street-in-work-attire). One couple wore
yarmulkes and carried a siddur; another couple looked like ordained
ministers, but I didn't know for sure of which Christian denomination.
(It must be one willing to ordain gay women.) At the back of City
Hall, the line was making its way through the door past a group of
about half a dozen well-wishers with big pink signs. They looked
like high school students. One of them was carrying an American
flag with gay rights symbols in place of the stars. (Oddly enough,
San Francisco regular Frank Chu was demonstrating too, with his
usual sign that had nothing to do with same-sex marriage -- instead
about galaxies, a rocket society, and impeaching former U.S.
presidents. I was pretty sure he was just trying to get on TV with
his message. You see him frequently in the Financial District.)
Zack and I walked straight through the door and into City Hall.
As soon as we made it clear that we weren't in the line and weren't
trying to sneak into the line, everyone let us through. We had
to go through security, but almost no one other than the newlyweds-to-be
was trying to get in to the building, so it was extremely easy.
Taking a back way, we ended up on the second floor where we heard
loud and frequent applause coming from elsewhere in the building.
We walked down a hallway and ran into the family of a straight couple
(!) who had chosen to get married at City Hall on Valentine's Day
waiting to use a restroom. They told Zack that all marriages that
day were being performed up on the fourth floor, so we took the
elevator up to the fourth floor (crammed full of couples with
their marriage licenses, and again in a wide variety of fashions).
On the fourth floor, volunteers were directing everyone to the
appropriate officiants out on the balconies that overlook the
grand central gallery. Zack and I seemed to be the only people
no associated with a particular couple, so we just charged on
through, telling a guard that we just wanted to watch some
weddings. All of a sudden we were out on the balcony with about
twenty-five couples and their families and four or five slightly
harried but extremely cheerful officiants. Someone down on the
floor of the gallery started to play the piano.
The balcony opposite ours was set up in the same general way:
officiants, couples, families. We heard frequent applause as
people there were pronounced "spouses for life", and shortly
the same thing happened right in front of us, perhaps three or
four feet from where we stood. There was no privacy, and there
was merely a basic decorum; nothing was ornate or elaboratively
choreographed. The emphasis seemed to be on speed with
appropriate respect. (One couple carried signs saying that they
had been together for 18 years and had wanted to be married the
whole time. Dan Bern says "I know how I hate to wait / Like
even for a bus or something / An important phone call / So I
can just imagine..." but of course I can't imagine.
There is also the matter of the litigation against the City
and the effort to prevent it from performing any more of these
marriages -- which is why, I think, the two women at the end
of the line were in tears.)
Zack and I applauded for the couples as they were married, and
shook hands with them. The couples were as diverse in age as
they were in dress: I saw a pair of women get married and was
sure they were younger than I am. And I saw and was most
touched by several weddings of people who had likely been
waiting even longer than 18 years. Two women of my mother's
age, or a little older, were married right in front of me, and
they started to cry. I almost started to cry, too.
We did see history. We saw a dozen or two dozen people get
married on Valentine's Day, who all very badly wanted to and
who got their chance.
A journalist in the hallway said "When I got married, my wife
made me sit around and plan the wedding for months and months.
She made me work out every detail. So I'm kind of jealous or
kind of frustrated that people would just wake up in the
morning and get married. But if you look into these people's
eyes, you don't want to deny them this."
SF Gate has pictures that look pretty similar to what
we saw.
I went with Michelle to hear Noe Venable perform at the Freight and
Salvage in Berkeley. It was a wonderful concert and Noe actually
managed to improve on her earlier performances of "Juniper", which
I hadn't imagined could be possible.
She performed some of her traditional favorites, but also quite a lot
of new material, including a song that asks us to "say a prayer for
beauty". I hope all this will be recorded in a new album.
It had started to rain by the time I left, and I was worried about
the people sleeping outside City Hall. (The evening news said they
were planning to stay there all night, even if it rained. It was
raining.)
I ran into the nearest pizza parlor to the Downtown Berkeley BART station
-- at least the nearest one open after midnight on a Sunday -- and asked
for an extra-large cheese pizza. They prepared it in record time, and I
caught the last BART train of the evening with about five minutes to spare.
I chatted with a couple of people on the train and then got off at Civic
Center with the pizza.
It wasn't hard to find the line. Despite the fairly heavy rain at 1:00
in the morning, over 100 people were camping out under a forest of
umbrellas, tents, sleeping bags, garbage bags, tarps, and other
makeshift shelters. (The Chronicle says well over 130
couples had lined up on Sunday night before the rain started. I'm
not sure whether that number grew or shrank with the change in the
weather.) They could be seen easily all the way across Civic
Center Plaza.
I made my way to the front of the line and started working backwards
from there, holding out the pizza box to everyone who was still awake.
(Actually, only about a tenth of the people in line were asleep,
whether because of the excitement or the rain or the cold. A lot of
people were holding umbrellas in their hands, which was not exactly
conducive to dozing off.) Most people said that they had already
had pizza about half an hour before -- apparently someone else had
just come through with the same idea. Still, there were exactly
enough hungry people that I gave away the last slice to someone at
the very end of the line (a young woman from Santa Cruz, if I remember
correctly).
The sight of the encampment around City Hall in the rain was
astonishingly gorgeous. You might think that people would be
suffering and miserable. But most of them seemed merely tired
and elated -- you might say glowing, or radiant. Part of it
was the fact that the various kinds of shelter that had been
cobbled together formed a sort of rainbow to match the rainbow-flag
sleeping bag or rainbow-flag jersey in which someone had appeared
fast asleep. It was especially amazing to see a few women who
appeared to be in their seventies willingly sleeping under crude
shelters in the rain in the hope of making it inside.
With my pizza gone, I caught a cab home and got in a little after
2:00 in the morning. Michelle had given me an emergency rain poncho
as I left, and just before getting into the cab I managed to pass
the poncho along to someone who had been wearing a torn garbage bag.
When I got home, I read various material that were coming out about
the situation, and I decided that I had to go to try to warm people up
in the morning. (The rain got stronger around 3:00 as I was heading
to bed.) I set my alarm for 8:00 in the hope of bringing the people
in line some breakfast. Since I had Monday off for President's Day,
I thought I could spend the morning at City Hall and then catch up
on sleep in the afternoon. The first part of that plan worked out
pretty well.
I ultimately made it to City Hall for the third time around 9:30 in
the morning with some bagels and coffee from Noah's Bagels in a
little pushcart. The cart turned out to be extremely important for
many reasons. First, it inspired confidence in my bona fides.
When I tried passing out bagels from a bag in my hands, people eyed
me a little skeptically. When the bagels came from an official-looking
cart, people even suspected that I had been sent by Noah's or some
local community organization. Second, it caught the attention of
other people passing out food and drink, causing one of them to fall
in with me. (More on that below.) Third, it made it bearable to
make two whole circuits around City Hall with what turned out to be
an unexpectedly large amount of food. And fourth, it led to my being
"deputized" to distribute even more items. Having the proper equipment
goes a long way.
My first observation in the morning was that most of the people who
had actually spent the entire night were already inside City Hall or
on the steps by 9:30, even though City Hall wasn't officially supposed
to open until 10:00. So those people (who had probably suffered the
most discomfort during the night) were mainly out of reach. The next
thing I discovered was that I had already missed my chance to be the
first person to offer everyone breakfast -- by a long shot. As I walked
the line and called out "Bagels! Coffee!", I saw people already
eating bagels and sipping coffee. It was clear that people had been
making the rounds since at least 8:30 and very likely much earlier
than that.
The people in line looked different under the morning light than they
had in the rain the night before. There had been something particularly
beautiful about the couples holding hands in a rainstorm, deriving
warmth from each other, standing up (sometimes literally) against the
cold and darkness. The people waiting in the morning looked thrilled,
but they were not keeping vigil. They were waiting in line
to be processed by a government agency. So the peculiar beauty of the
morning wait seemed to me to be the way that San Francisco welcomed
everyone.
It took me about five minutes of cart-pushing to fall in with Heidi,
a woman who told me she had been married the day before and was so
grateful that she'd decided to come back from the East Bay and help
out. It was a great help not to be alone, and Heidi had something
I didn't: cream cheese!
So: "Coffee! Bagels! Cream cheese!".
As we worked our way through the line, we saw other people making
their way around with coffee of their own (mostly Peet's and
Starbucks in containers like the huge ones I'd gotten at Noah's).
The cart was like a magnet for people who were carrying heavy food
items in their hands. "Would you like to give out these muffins?
I can just put them in your cart..."
"Coffee! Bagels! Muffins! Cream cheese!"
It developed that some people were trying to give Heidi money or
asking her how much we were charging. So we had to make another
change (one of the most successful):
"Free coffee! Bagels! Muffins! Cream cheese!"
Now someone approached us with a jug of apple juice and Heidi
discovered that Noah's had packed away a couple of cartons of
half-and-half cream. Our menu just kept on expanding. The
apple juice was particularly good because so many couples had
brought young children with them. And we also found some sugar
and sweeteners (appropriately enough, Equal!) in among the food
items that kept accumulating in the cart. Two more people passed
by with big bags of bagels and added them in.
"Free coffee, bagels, muffins, cream cheese and cream: apple juice!"
Another person walked along with us with a separate jug of orange
juice for a couple of minutes, but I was spared having to add the
orange juice into the litany because we got separated again. However,
I discovered that one of the bags of bagels also contained bialies.
"Free coffee, bagels, muffins, cream cheese and cream: or a bialy.
Apply juice!"
By this point Heidi and I were turning the second corner. We had
started on the Polk Street side of City Hall and gone around the
corner onto Grove, and now we turned right again onto Van Ness.
The line continued all the way down Van Ness until the corner
of Van Ness and McAllister, which is exactly what the news stories
were referring to when they reported that the line "stretched
around three city blocks", etc. It was true. Around the corner
and around the corner again and down to the next corner.
I tried to ask Heidi a little more about her family but kept
interrupting myself with the need to call out "Free coffee,
bagels, muffins, cream cheese and cream: apple juice!" or reaching
into the cart to pull out one of the containers of coffee. (It's
a shame that I hadn't thought to say "May I have a large container
of coffee?" when I called up Noah's first thing in the morning.
The reason it's a shame is that that's a famous mnemonic for pi
and I have never actually managed to use a famous mnemonic for
pi for a practical business purpose before. Oh well.)
Because of all the interruptions, we were all the way to McAllister
and Larkin before Heidi found out that I was straight. We had a
few moments to chat before we reached the main entrance again and
started our way through the line. By this time we had given out
all the food Heidi and I had brought, but the cart was still full.
Someone had supplied dozens of onion bagels. I hope newlyweds like
onion bagels. How many people, if asked to predict what they would
eat on their wedding days, would say "I guess some guy is going to
hand me an onion bagel out of a pushcart and his friend is going to
apply a little cream cheese?"
As I said, we were definitely not the only people working the
crowd. Just as City Hall was officially opening, a group of
little girls appeared with a large container of flowers and
started to offer flowers -- tulips, I think -- to the people
waiting in line. Most people eagerly accepted them; in their
rush to City Hall, they generally hadn't had any time to order
wedding flowers! We also saw people distributing biscotti (!)
and chocolate hearts, and I read later on that there were even
dry socks being passed out for the benefit of people who had
spent the night on line. (I wanted to bring some dry socks
myself, but I didn't really have a way to get to a sock store
before City Hall opened.)
I don't remember how many times we went through the line, but I
do know I got into the "Free coffee, bagels, cream cheese..."
(the last muffin went around half way through the Van Ness
block) chant well enough that I hardly had to think about it.
I also know that we ran out of food after about two hours, so
that must have been shortly before noon. Still, food continued
to be distributed. Another group had a much nicer cart -- a
really professional restaurant or hotel serving cart, with much
more coffee than my cart could have held, and an even better
assortment of food. I think they arrived a little later and
they were still up and about shortly after noon.
Heidi and I said goodbye, and then I went around to the main
entrance of City Hall and watched people coming out with their
marriage licenses. It was raining -- it had been raining on
and off this whole time, and I was hiding inside a big blue rain
poncho -- but a really significant crowd had gathered to cheer
people on. And someone was giving out plastic sleeves to hold the
marriage licenses so that people could safely show them to the crowd
on emerging from City Hall in the rain.
The crowd cheered loudly every time a couple came through the
door, and one pair of very well-dressed men had a traditional
cloud of rice thrown at them as they kissed under the "City Hall"
sign. (I overheard who one of them was, and it developed that
he was a fairly well-known local figure.)
Someone passed me a "We All Deserve the Freedom to Marry" sign.
I made a final circuit of the building carrying that sign (and
pushing my cart, which now carried only a mostly-empty Noah's
coffee container that someone had already refilled once from a
big Thermos). Someone had given an identical sign to the
statute of Abraham Lincoln that sits to one side of the City
Hall entrance.
The rain started again, and a strong wind blew, but it didn't
seem to scare off the sort of reception line. As I walked
across Polk Street toward the BART station, a gust of wind
toppled a satellite dish from the CNN truck in Civic Center
Plaza (one of perhaps five television trucks in the area).
Just before that, I'd seen a woman, just married, toss a bouquet
of flowers into the crowd.
Riana came by City Hall on Sunday and
took
some pictures of the whole scene, which she's posted along with
the story of her trip. I have no pictures of my own, but I did
get caught on camera a couple of times -- sniffling and probably
somewhat disheveled in my poncho. (I won't appear in any of Riana's
pictures because she was there about ten hours before I was.)
Anyway, beauty!
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Contact: Seth David Schoen
