Some of you may have seen my heightened Twitter activity for CopyCamp, an unconference for discussing issues concerning copyright. Government representatives, artists, and geeks alike spent a day and a half discussing licensing, business models, DRM (TCMs), and many more things. I took some notes, here are some summaries:

Production Tools

Related to how content we distribute should be licensed is the question of what tools / formats are being used in content production. People should be able to use any tools they want without being limited by what tools others / their audience / publishers use. The solution here is, of course, open formats – but open formats must be widespread to be usable. Users should not have to think about what they’re doing, it should transparently work.

Users often honestly don’t know there are options in tools – they just use what they’re given / trained on. While this should be possible to do (see above) education about options and competition is good. Some users are more comfortable going a roundabout way than using the better way / tool – this is fine, but when they encounter new mediums / techniques they should be given the “right” option as much as possible.

Someone can be a brilliant artist unable to afford the tools. Should the ability to do art be a right (ala education)? What about the ability to create documents (such as business plans) that are part of how we function. [I don’t think so, although I am a FLOSS supporter and would like to see more of this, I don’t think the government should be involved.]

Does the value of a piece of art come from the art itself or what you can do with that art? [I think both in all cases.]

Net Neutrality

Phone and cable companies (the major bandwidth providers) build business models based on having a smart network and dumb terminals – the Internet is a dumb network with smart terminals. Do telcos own the network? The government legislated their right to use the land, they just own the copper. The citizens really have as much right to it as the telcos. We can separate production from distribution and not let the telcos have such a monopoly (think deregulation of electricity).

Public Domain Registry

MediaWiki, Creative Commons Canada, and others are working to catalogue ( / host ? ) all Canadian books in the public domain. This is a hard problem since many books do not survive the long life of their copyright. This perhaps should be a federal issue (preserving culture) – but private funding works because the government will not. The “restriction” to Canada does not limit distribution, and so does not limit the uses of the project. It is important to be able to tell what parts of a work are PD (such as poems in a collection) as well as what whole works.

Music Business Models

Fading Ways Music is an indie label whose artists are all CC-BY-NC-SA [somewhat evil, yet so forward thinking]. They primarily use the traditional pay-per-unit business model though.

Jamendo is a site that hosts libre content music and shares ad profits with artists.

Don’t protect the existing models (ie, music tax) – instead come up with / use better models.

The “rights” of the public need to be balanced with the rights of the artist. One model is a take on the “freemium” model where high-quality content requires a fee-based membership (ala 76fanclubs and others). There are benefits, especially to the long tail, of such a model. (OH HAI, BTW, LONG TAIL ALWZ HAPPNS, LIEK ON BLOGZ.) There is a growing desire to remove intermediaries between artists and fans, yet the favourite tools (MySpace / Facebook / Last.fm) really *are* intermediaries (albeit automatic ones), but artists think it’s a pain to update them all and are turning to more layers of indirection again (can haz DiSo?).

I’ve been interested in different forms of communication for some time.  It’s part of what makes social networking so interesting to me.  I’ve been reading about others’ experiences too.  Of course there’s Tantek’s CommunicationProtocols page, which inspired my own Communication Protocols section on my main page (and, probably, @seanbonner’s PreferedMeansOfContact).  Trevor Creech recently challenged me on my Twitter usage, calling it “Twitterfail” (in reference to efail).  I would like to discuss some of they ways I’ve started thinking about communication.

First, a tip from my own main page: If you find a solution, from me or elsewhere, blog it. Someone else may benefit.  I have come to think of my Twitter and Ma.gnolia accounts as blogs (especially since they began to manifest their updates in the actionstream on my main page).  If I find an interesting tidbit, or have a potentially interesting thought, I tweet it.  This lead, one day, to >20 tweets in 24 hours, the condition which Trevor complained about.  In response, I have tried to consider first if something is really useful at all before I tweet (I don’t want to be the cause of a signal/noise problem) – but I have also started including better context in my tweets.  Interesting links go to Ma.gnolia.

Searchability has become key for me. This is one of the reasons I love my IM setup – everything anyone says to me, whether I’m online or off, at my computer or not, is archived in Gmail for easy search.  My tweets and blog posts are also searchable – in fact, if you just say “singpolyma” or link to me in a blog post, there’s a huge chance that I’ll see it.

When it comes to factors like immediacy, lifespan,  audience, bandwidth, and sychronity they are all important, but are different for different messages.  If I’m setting up a meeting or working on a project, immediacy and bandwidth are hugely important (thus, face to face or IM are best).  If I’m discussing something of interest to me, asychronity, lifespan, and audience are the most important factors (thus, mailing lists, forums, Pibb, and IRC are best).  There is no “perfect” communication form – all have their place.

I have requested that people use post/page comments for debugging/feature requests on my projects.  This is because a comment is almost as good as blogging something (it can be used by others who may benefit) and is searchable.  It also reduces the chances that I get asked for the same thing a bunch of times – others can see what is being discussed (which, incidentally, in the same reason I love GetSatisfaction).  Pages + comments are almost as good as (in fact, in many cases, I feel are better than) a wiki.

Yes, I’ve been into lolcats and lolcode recently.  I’m also almost done my crappy factory job (because they’re laying everyone off).  This means I may be looking for a lot of freelancing stuff.  I’ve applied at a half-ok IT job that I may get for the next two months (I have an interview set up), but no idea.  It’s a long commute too.

Ok, but let’s make this relevant (because I’m also posting it on my tech blog!).  Seeing great jobs you can’t get is annoying!  Like one I’m looking at right now over at Ning.  They’re looking for a new developer advocate to replace Yoz (at least, I assume it’s to replace him since he left and that was his job…).   I would LOVE that job.  Work for Ning, do what I love, get paid for it, all the best of life at once.

There are, of course, hangups.

1. I do not, and do not particularly want to, live in Palo Alto, CA.  The biggest reason why not is that I’m starting school come fall and would have to move back, although family plays a part here too.
2. I am starting school come fall.  I can’t work full-time and do school full-time (at least, not in a way that would please both my employers and professors).
3. I do not have a degree.

The last one is kind of stupid.  I know I’ll learn a lot getting a degree, but my experience with Ning the last two years ought to say something.  Of course, I’ve never written an actually successful app.  This is mostly because I suck at PR and get my fingers in too many pots at once.  Whatever, the other two reasons are rather huge themselves.

Ok, so that’s my rant-ramble-uselessness.   In case you’re wondering, I am getting back to you.  Give me time.  I know I have a lot of messages from you.  I’m busy.  😉

So I promised that after the move to singpolyma.net I’d write more personal stuff again and it hasn’t happened.  Sorry if you’re a friend of mine who once cared and has now given up   I have better email subscriptions now!  And I think my Xanga cross-posting is fixed (we’ll see…).  You must admit, though, I get far more attention on my tech blog   I peaked at 20 subscribers here, and there I have 170 last count.  Ok, still no excuse.

So, what’s up with me?  Well, school’s been out for a week now.  I got accepted into U of W for next semester (yay!).  I’m job-hunting.  That can be nasty.  Still doing volunteer childcare on Wednesdays.  Still coding my brains out.

*shrugs* not that much to say.  Well, there is, but I’m not sure what.  I used to know my audience here — NSA friends.  I’ve lost touch with most of you however, and no one else ever really read this.  Perhaps this post will sail into oblivion (hence why my brother no longer writes personal stuff).

Well, if you’re into it, Facebook me   I’m not a huge fan of the system, but if it works for you I’m on it.

So long for now.

Some of you may have noticed the gradual changes going on — most notably the 150 or so of you who read me by feed. I am moving my primary web presences from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress on singpolyma.net.

My Technical, Personal, and XOXO blogs are all here (see tabs above) with all their content. If the old ones aren’t properly redirecting yet, they will be soon — going to a post on the old sites should take you to that post on this site. Feeds have not changed much, they are still on FeedBurner, but there is now a main feed (and blog) that combines posts from all three!

The site is not 100% done, obviously (a hacker’s site never is 😉 ), so if you see something that needs to be added/changed, feel free to contact me!

For this launch I have upgraded my FreshTags plugin and written Videntity and OldBlog redirection plugins. All my WordPress plugins now have thier own page.

Some of my TechBlog readers may fear (and, in fact, this has been voiced to me) that now that I am WordPress-powered I will forget Blogger. Not true at all. My existing hacks will receive maintenance, and new ones will be coming. I am not deleting my account or anything ;).

So, to finish this post up, I would like to thank those who made this site possible. If I forgot anyone or anything, it shall be added.