Exposing a closed Congress to Open Source: Change Congress
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| The first half of Lessig's remarks closely tracked the inaugural lecture on
| corruption he delivered at Stanford last year, after announcing that he would
| be abandoning the work on cyberlaw and free culture that had made him a geek
| superstar in order to study the ways money's influence distorts the political
| process. He detailed how, on an array of "easy questions" in areas ranging
| from copyright terms to dietary recommendations to climate change to military
| procurement, the interests of funders had driven a wedge between policy
| formation or academic inquiry and the overwhelming consensus of impartial
| experts. He also offered conservatives, who have often been skeptics of
| campaign finance reform, a rationale to share his concerns: "Why is
| government so big?" Lessig asked rhetorically. "Because congressmen must get
| elected." He claimed, for example, that legislators had been reluctant to
| establish a more deregulated telecommunications framework for the Internet in
| the 1990s because the looming threat of regulation kept campaign
| contributions rolling in from telecom firms.
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080323-exposing-a-closed-congress-to-open-source-change-congress.html
The Amazing Race
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| David Warren, 30, works as an engineering product manager for a defense
| contractor by day, but in his free time leads the Society for Sustainable
| Mobility's Open Source Green Vehicle Project. The goal is a seven-passenger
| SUV that will get 100 mpg, sell for about $30,000, and, he says, have the
| performance of a Porsche Cayenne.
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http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/the-amazing-race.html
Recent:
Professor Lessig Is In
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| Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig hates corruption. He hates it so much, in
| fact, that last year he announced he’d be shifting away from his work on
| copyright and trademark law — on which he’s one of the leading experts in the
| country, especially when it comes to emerging digital, broadcast, and
| Internet technologies — to focus on it. He hates it so much he considered
| running for Tom Lantos’s seat in Congress, at the behest of an Internet
| campaign to draft him. (After a few days of soul-searching, he decided
| against it.)
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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDNhMzdlZDcwNTVlYzRiMzZkZDMxMzAyMmU5ZDg2MjY=
EU suggests singers and musicians should earn copyright fees for 95 years
,----[ Quote ]
| Singers and musicians should earn royalty fees for 95 years — almost double
| the current 50-year limit, a European Union official said Thursday as he
| promised to draft new copyright protection rules.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/14/business/EU-FIN-EU-Music-Royalties.php
RIAA gets Does' names after school threatened with contempt
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| Hours after a federal court judge ordered Oklahoma State University to show
| cause why it shouldn't be held in contempt for failing to respond to an RIAA
| subpoena, attorneys for the school e-mailed a list of students' names to the
| RIAA's attorneys.
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http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080213-riaa-gets-does-names-after-school-threatened-with-contempt.html
http://tinyurl.com/yrxvr5
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5jkZFIwmc-8
Related:
Lessig: Required Reading: the next 10 years
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| Yet governments continue to push ahead with this idiot idea -- both Britain
| and Japan for example are considering extending existing terms. Why?
|
| The answer is a kind of corruption of the political process. Or better,
| a "corruption" of the political process. I don't mean corruption in the
| simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the
| system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get
| an issue as simple and clear as term extension right.
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http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/003800.shtml#003800
RIAA, MPAA urge pro-copyright vows from presidential candidates
,----[ Quote ]
| One question, for instance, asks: "How would you promote the progress of
| science and creativity, as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, by upholding
| and strengthening copyright law and preventing its diminishment?"
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http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9821141-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
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