This might be the most concise argument I’ve heard for the need for net neutrality legislation.
Simply put…there would not be an Internet today if it wasn’t free from the beginning.
—Tim Berners Lee (the guy who brought us this Internet thing) testifying before a Congressional committee.
Courtesy of our new friends at Public.Resource.Org.
It seems that MIT has an entire Center for Collective Intelligence, launched in fall ‘06. Their basic research question is:
How can people and computers be connected so that—collectively—they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?
They observe the recent influence of entities like Google and Wikipedia, and suggest that the time is ripe for more collaborative online systems.
And they even have their own wiki.
But, on a closer look…we have one leg up on ‘em after all: looks like they haven’t figured out RSS feeds yet. Guess we’d better keep publishing, after all!
Thanks for the tip, Cam.
Last week, I wrote a blog post about the Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee asserting copyright over the Oregon Revised Statutes. Well, we got them to change their mind! Read all about it on the WikiProject Oregon blog.
I submitted a couple talks to this month’s Ignite Portland event. This is a really cool series of events — basically, a bunch of people are chosen to give 5-minute presentations, accompanied by a slideshow, on any topic of their choosing. The topics vary widely, with topics like origami, how to buy a used car, and an excellent crash course in nuclear physics.
Thankfully, I wasn’t selected this time — what with the Oregon Revised Statutes issue I got embroiled in, I don’t know where I would have found the time to get a presentation prepared!
So I got to attend as an audience member, which was much more my speed. Here’s my favorite of the 5-minute presentations I saw, by Jenny Andrews:
Is it a bike? A landboat?
Or at least that’s how it looks to me — from my experience in the last few days.
The background: MetroFi built an extensive wireless network for the City of Portland. It didn’t work often, and when it worked, it didn’t work well. So the City opted out of the contract paying for bandwidth for core services. There’s lots of chatter in the blogs about the bad decisions made along the way, the cost to taxpayers, etc. Lots of gazing at trees.
But in the last few days, I’ve had what may be a remarkable glimpse of the forest.
I’ve connected to MetroFi nodes in numerous parts of town, and noticed two new things each time:
Has anyone else had this experience? If you’re gonna check, do it quick, because the scuttlebutt says the whole thing’s getting shut down Friday. After that, who knows — sold for scrap?
But as we Portlanders contemplate what to do next, what about this possibility:
Was MetroFi’s network killed by a flawed technical approach to advertising? Did they shut it off after the contract was voided, only to reveal a perfectly functional municipal wireless network under all the junk?
And as we think that over, keep in mind that municipally-operated Internet access has been proven to work, with enormous benefits to citizens as ‘net consumers and citizens as taxpayers, alike. Since the late 1990s. In Kentucky.
Some of you might not know me, but we work together. That’s right, we legislate. We pass laws by proxy through the legislature, and directly too, when we vote on ballot measures.
But according to the Legislative Counsel Committee (LCC), we don’t own the laws we make; they do. And they get to decide who can and can’t publish them.
They’ve been saying this, apparently, since 1953, but it came to a head last April. That’s when when the LCC — a committee of several prominent legislators — issued a “takedown notice” to Justia.com, ordering them to stop publishing the Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) on the web. Justia is a company that publishes laws from various U.S. states, in a standard and well-indexed format. (Here’s an example from another state.)
Public.Resource.Org (P.R.O.), a non-profit partner of Justia, took exception, and made the case for a change — both out in the blogosphere, and by retaining counsel and challenging the decision on legal grounds.
P.R.O. got the committee’s attention; this Thursday, June 19, the LCC will hold a hearing, and will consider their arguments. I’ll be giving the case on behalf of Oregon Wikipedians and bloggers. Here are two key points: Read more »
The powers that be have determined that Oregon’s laws are NOT in the public domain, and that web sites republishing them are in violation of copyright. There’s a hearing about it this Thursday morning.
In my view, this is a massive misunderstanding of the role that the Internet can and should play in advancing the public discourse, and general knowledge about the laws that we write through democratic processes.
Please take a look at my blog post about it (at the WikiProject Oregon blog), and do something to get this reversed. There’s a hearing this Thursday morning; attending and testifying would be great if you can, or writing your legislators would be a big help, too.
I just posted some suggestions for getting started on writing a Wikipedia article, on the WikiProject Oregon blog. Check it out!
PortlandOnline.com is the City of Portland’s official government web site. It is, largely, a broken web site. Information that should be accessible on a web page is typically hidden inside a PDF file. Resource allocations of amounts like $84 million cannot be found without first tracking down the relevant ordinance number, and even then there is precious little information available. (Ten points for whoever can find the $84 million item on this page!)
And no, this isn’t just another one of Pete’s pointless rants — at the end of this post, I’ll explain what’s new and unique about the YouTube video below:
Welcome to my world!
—Pete Forsyth
