to review

Creative commons record comtract
http://www.grayscalerecords.com/files.php?title=contract/contract

GQ Japan article about Boing Boing
(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) I was interviewed by GQ Japan a while back.
Here's a translation (courtesy of Ben List):
"bOING bOING" began before the word "blog" began appearing circa 2000. Mark Frauenfelder has reached the top position in the world of bloggers. We flew to LA to hear his secret.
1. The power of persistance
"We started early, and found our readership. It was really just lucky." he says modestly, however the popularity of the site is largely due to "frequent updating." Though "bOING bOING" was essentially started by Mark, he now collaborates with three writer friends contributing material from their various fields of interest.
"The readership of a blog is proportional to how frequent one is able to update." Frauenfelder spends only two hours a day on the blog, however is able to keep the content fresh with the aid of his partners.
2. Curiosity and the spirit of fun
"bOING bOING's" core staff are all professional writers having gained experiences writing for such publications as "Wired." "By nature, our curiosity is twice that of most people and are able to keep the content fresh." In their search for interesting content they do daily searches through magazines, newspapers, nerdy trade publications, and the internet. There was never any intention of making a profit (with "bOING bOING"), so they are driven mainly by "simply having fun with it." Unlike traditional media, the instant feedback of publishing on the internet, and direct contact with the readership is also part of the appeal. "The improvisational aspect (?) is as addictive as an adrenaline rush"
3. No compromising to advertisers or to readers
While they haven't created a corporation in the traditional way, "bOING bOING" has become a true business. With 200,000 hits daily from inside and outside the U.S., the company made $20,000 in advertisements from skateboard brand and a T-Shirt company in March, however maintaining an independent spirit is the the most important thing.
"We have been known to criticize corporations, but we don't kowtow to our advertisers. The popularity of the site was earned by writing what we want, but we aren't looking to change anything for our readers.
4. The key is in community collaboration
"The best part is the spirit of being able to share your thoughts and what interests you with the readers and community" Frauenfelder says. Communication with other bloggers has been the key to increasing the readership. By trading links with other blogs, communication becomes much more active, and traffic to and from the site increases. "The world of blogs is made up of innumerable tiny islands in a vast ocean all communicating with each other. It's the ultimate success for a blog to become part of that community." http://www.tie-a-tie.net/
http://www.livepublishing.co.uk/retro/page_644.shtml
http://spamshirt.com/
http://www.cult45.fsbusiness.co.uk/featuresjackie.html
http://www.ecoist.com/
http://www.go-go-boots.com/
Paper crafts
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/index.html
the rap canterbury tales
http://www.babasword.com/writing/rapcantales.html
Catherine sez, "Bazillionaire Richard Branson of Virgin Enterprises is suing little guy Jason Yang, proprietor of Virgin Threads for trademark infringement. Yang, whose sole source of income is the site, and who supports a young family, is fighting the lawsuit, arguing that no one should be able to trademark a common word. Classic David and Goliath story."
Virgin Enterprises filed a federal lawsuit against VirginThreads.com and several others using virgin* domain names, accusing them of trademark infringement, dilution, and cyberpiracy. All for using a word that's been in the English language for far longer than mogul Branson has been using it as a trademark for his businesses. As David Bollier asks in a CNN Money story on the subject, "If anyone can lay claim to that word, shouldn't it be the Catholic church?"
m Traditional trademark law, concerned with consumer confusion, finds infringement when one use of a mark tends to deceive consumers about the source of goods or services they're buying. Dilution goes beyond that to allow the holder of a "famous" mark to bar use that "causes dilution of the distinctive quality of the mark," even outside the trademark holder's realm of goods. Dilution is a big gun, and one rightly limited to distinctive coined terms and actual harm, as the Supreme Court ruled when it held that "Victor's Little Secret" did not dilute "Victoria's Secret."
http://claytoncubitt.com/blogs/usedfuture/2005/07/nigerian-badasses-by-pieter-hugo.html
unusual condom adds
http://www.coloribus.com/condom/
google style logo
21st century will see us
https://confluence.rave.ac.uk/confluence/display/CGRE/School+of+Computing+for+the+Creative+Industries+Overview
cc school
London college launches all CC/wiki program
London's Ravensbourne College is creating a new program called the School of Computing for the Creative Industries. The whole of the coursewear is Creative Commons licensed and the school itself is organized via a wiki. That's pretty twenty-first-century education!
The School of Computing for the Creative Industries is a new departure for Ravensbourne College. It retains Ravensbourne's commitment to vocationalism and practical skills, as well as Ravensbourne's spirit of innovation and enterprise. Though the School takes its inspiration and values from the core of the Ravensbourne tradition, it also embraces new opportunities and a new vision. The School's programmes are rigorous with a strong technical focus. One of the undergraduate programmes is delivered entirely via e-learning. The other programmes make strategic use of e-learning, digital communications, and Web 2.0 technologies as a living demonstration of, and a process of practical research in, the subject matter of the School.
The learner-practitioner is the heart and life-blood of the School. We recognise that the creative professional of the future - the new creative - has a distinctive skill-set and an easy relationship with technology. The new creative is a connected citizen, whose passions and campaigns, ideas and innovations appear first on their blog. The new creative uses the internet as an inspirational resource, drawing on that vast, interconnected meme-pool, but returning far more to it than s/he ever withdraws. Fundamentally, the new creative understands that s/he is defined by the impact and credibility of their online presence.
As the creative industries bifurcate into the twin realities of intellectual property businesses, and crafts-for-hire, the new creative has the skill, and panache, to exploit the opportunities of the new creative landscape.
FRee software for busy people http://freedomsoftware.info/content/category/1/1/45/
? how does he prevent people from downloading book
Access to Knowledge treaty has a site
The Access to Knowledge treaty is an effort to get the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to start acting like a humanitarian UN agency, instead of an industry consortium solely concerned with extending copyright, patents and trademark. The treaty calls on WIPO to harmonize international law to ease the tasks of educators, archivists and those who provide access to disabled people -- today, the laws for these tasks vary from nation to nation, making international cooperation legally difficult if not impossible.
An open group of international non-governmental organizations, governments, scholars, acticists and individuals has been planning the treaty for some months now and we've finally got a web-site where all of our work is being documented and published, with calls to action and other ways to get involved. Anyone can register and add material to the site.
In an October 15 speech, the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Jonathan Dudas, vowed that the U.S. government will "fight" proposals that aim to "fundamentally change the WIPO charter and philosophy" away from its current focus on the promotion of intellectual property.
In his keynote remarks at the Annual Meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA--a 15,000-member U.S. bar association comprised primarily of intellectual property lawyers) Dudas stated emphatically that "our current system and international norms are properly balanced". In a not-so-oblique reference to recent discussions at WIPO of a 'Development Agenda,' Dudas derided efforts to encourage WIPO to take a more balanced approach to intellectual property as part of a "strategy to water down intellectual property protection" that is "even worse" than efforts to increase PCT application fees.
http://www.access2knowledge.org/cs/
Clients threaten designers over portfolios
Suw Charman's published her excellent article from Design In-Flight magazine on ad agencies and marketing companies that threaten to sue their designers for putting samples of their own work in their portfolios:
When designer Jason Santa Maria put his portfolio online he wasn't expecting to get a Cease and Desist letter from a former employer citing clauses from his contract and demanding that he remove any references to them, including all images, from his site. Jason had fallen foul of his old Work for Hire contract which transferred ownership of all rights in his designs to the company he worked for. It meant that the only legal way he could use his designs in his portfolio was to obtain express permission from the rights owner, his former employer, or challenge the restriction in court.
"I wasn't entirely aware of the ramifications when I signed," Jason admits. "I was young and inexperienced. Most design shops accept that people will use the work they do in their public portfolios, but because you are now able to have a body of work on your website which can be accessible by anyone at anytime, I think you will see an increase in situations like this. Information is so readily available that you can't assume people aren't looking and, more importantly, aren't taking notice.
Link