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World’s Fair Use Day

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On January 12, 2010

In Distribution, Law, Music, Policy, Society, Tech

It’s World’s Fair Use Day! Err, what’s that?

World’s Fair Use Day (WFUD) is a free, all-day celebration of the doctrine of fair use: the legal right that allows innovators and creators to make particular uses of copyrighted materials. WFUD will take place at the Newseum in Washington D.C. on Tuesday January 12, 2010, and will be organized by Public Knowledge (PK), a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, consumer-advocacy group. PK works to ensure that communications and intellectual property policies encourage creativity, further free expression and discourse and provide universal access to knowledge. As part of its campaign to return balance to copyright law, PK hopes to use WFUD to educate the public about the importance of fair use in an information society.

That’s where I’ll be all day. Sound interesting to you? You can watch the proceedings below, and participate via the connected chat and Twitter hashtag (which I expect will be projected behind the speakers for most of the day).

(moved embed to the flip b/c it’s autoplaying)

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Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal

By

On January 5, 2010

In Law, Society

From Saturday’s NYT Editorial:

Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It’s not torture if you don’t mean it to be. It’s not torture if you don’t nearly kill the victim. It’s not torture if the president says it’s not torture.

It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by four former Guantánamo detainees never charged with any offense. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs’ rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not “clearly established” that torture was illegal.

The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties. Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the case.

[ . . . ]

In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment.

Shameful actions, no? I fear that some think it’s just the last bits of the horrors of the Bush Administration being dusted away. Well, remember:

The party that urged the Supreme Court not to grant the victims’ appeal because the illegality of torture was not “clearly established” was the Obama Justice Department.

Mexico City. Really.

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On December 21, 2009

In Law, Society

Slowly and surely:

Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.

I’ve not spent much time in Mexico City, but this strikes me as kinda big.  Sort of – to use a maybe not so great analogy – Ireland banning smoking in pubs.  That is to say, if *they* can do it, anyone can . . .

(I wonder if the Catholic Church there is throwing the same fits it has been in DC.)

Frank Luntz Produces Something Interesting

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On December 20, 2009

In Law, Politics, Society

Frank Luntz has an obvious talent, but it’s so often been used to such appalling ends (“death tax”, “government run healthcare”, etc.) that I don’t often look twice when I see his name.   However, he’s a gun-for-hire at heart, and he has occasionally crossed into unfamiliar territory to produce something interesting.  Looks like he’s recently done that, on the subject of guns:

Mr. Luntz queried 832 gun owners, including 401 card-carrying N.R.A. members, in a survey commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the alliance of hundreds of executives seeking stronger gun laws. In flat rebuttal of N.R.A. propaganda, the findings showed that 69 percent of N.R.A. members supported closing the notorious gun-show loophole that invites laissez-faire arms dealing outside registration requirements.

Even more members, 82 percent, favored banning gun purchases to suspects on terrorist watch lists who are now free to arm. And 69 percent disagreed with Congressionally imposed rules against sharing federal gun-trace information with state and local police agencies.

I don’t think that’s dispositive of anything, but it sure is interesting.  I think the continuing public conversation over gun ownership and what it means would be well served by less insane NRA fearmongering and more intelligent engagement of the issue.

Mississippi Goddamn

By

On December 18, 2009

In Law, Society

Cont’d.

Interesting Redistricting Tool

By

On December 15, 2009

In Law, Politics

Received this from an Open Government list I’m on, and think that it’s well worth sharing.  Try it here, after you read the original accompanying email:

In preparation for Redistricting 2011, the company I work for, Avencia, started building a web-based redistricting tool for collaborative/ community-based redistricting projects: http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/search.aspx and
http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/draw.aspx

Type your address –> get a shape of your legislative district(s) and get a compactness score (less compact is **sometimes** a sign of gerrymandering — some exceptions apply for geographic irregularities.

For instance:
shoreline, mountain range, rivers, etc.) + (first phase of) draw your own district.

Our hope is that a tool like this could be developed into a more complete toolkit used by political advocacy organizations to let citizens or groups of people fully participate in the redistricting
process by enabling the sharing, publishing, and voting of sample redistricting plans through
the Internet/ Twitter or other outlets. Ultimately, these plans might be used to influence final decisions. Screen shots of  a full blown redistricting toolkit: http://www.redistrictingthenation.com/services.aspx

We know there are some pretty important players in the redistricting world (especially software wise). There are also some great free initiatives like Dave’s Redistricting App:
http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/launchapp.html

So I’d love to hear your feedback not only about our idea, but also about what features an ideal community-based “redistricting tool” might provide users (i.e., if you had a dream app what would it be?)

This is going to be consuming a lot of state legislature time soon – best start getting prepared for it.

Well Done, DC. Well Done.

By

On December 15, 2009

In DC, Law, Personal, Society

Equality.

The Stupidity of British Public Policy on Photography

By

On December 11, 2009

In Law, Society, UK

continues.

The Official Guide to How the TSA Will Treat You

By

On December 8, 2009

In Law, Travel

This post links to the TSA’s screening point operations manual.  Seems that someone at TSA had the bright idea to post it in a rather weakly redacted manner.  We’ll skip over the fact that the entire document itself seems to be marked SSI (that is, Sensitive Security Information – not to be disclosed), and shouldn’t have been posted at all – redacted or otherwise.  We’ll go straight to noting that it was redacted using the same pointless method that has been derided since . . . the late 90s?  Which means, of course, that we all get to see which passports send you straight to secondary screening, which putative bans aren’t enforced, etc.   In the end, it’s a lot of terribly unsurprising stuff, but the point is that the super duper triple probation secrets that the TSA has be working so hard to keep obscure are all, well, kinda stupid.  I think we’d all be better off knowing and understanding these guidelines in the first place.

Dan Savage Puts It in (Shockingly SFW) Simple Terms

By

On December 4, 2009

In Law, Personal, Politics, Society

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3KhZsMXw9I[/youtube]

He says all the right things.  And he does . . . nothing.

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