Comments on: Content layer infrastructure

By: Notability, deletionism, inclusionism, ∞³ « Mike Linksvayer

Notability, deletionism, inclusionism, ∞³ « Mike Linksvayer — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 08:05:23 +0000

[...] the “media” items my name has appeared in are indeed about Creative Commons, i.e., me doing my job, not me as primary subject, or in a few cases, about calorie restriction, with me as a prop. Or [...]

By: Bob Kerns

Bob Kerns — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:10:34 +0000

I didn’t think it was a big deal. It was clear to me what you meant.

I think you have to allow that sometimes, not everyone will understand every single thing outside their domain.

In this case, you used words that everyone has some understanding of, and the fact that you were making a precise technical analogy would, I think, to most people, look just like a bit of unclear wording they can still follow.

I think it suffered more from the sentence being too long, without any cues.

Perhaps:
This has been done in the open source software world for a couple decades now. But now people are more concerned about the content. Think of the content as a separate layer, on top of the software and communication infrastructure. We need a way to clear content permissions without the lawyer-to-lawyer conversation every single time.

By: Tim Lee

Tim Lee — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:13:49 +0000

Great job Mike. The host’s mangling of copyright law at the beginning made me wince a bit.

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:59:02 +0000

By the way, a couple other Ito mentions of CC and a new layer found on the web. Etech session abstract:

TCP/IP and The Web were open standards and specifications that created an explosion of innovation by lowering friction and transaction costs for interoperability. Creative Commons is creating a new layer of open standards and specifications for interoperability and to lower friction at the legal/copyright and semantics layer.

CC fundraising message:

I believe that we will soon be another basic layer of interoperability, similar to the World Wide Web or the Internet Protocol.

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:54:43 +0000

leesean, all true. May more viewers become users.

By: leesean

leesean — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:49:25 +0000

And by “user,” I meant “viewer.” I clearly spend way more time on the Internets than in front of the telly.

By: leesean

leesean — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:47:20 +0000

I’m probably a bit geekier than the average user, but I still found your use of the term “content layer” a bit confusing and “tech jargony.” Another talking point I would have tried to get in there more explicitly is that CC is not just about doing away with the trouble of lawyers, but that it offers a tool for social practice and community building founded on values different from those found in the most restrictive form of copyright.

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:09:08 +0000

Thanks John and Taran. Maybe that line didn’t sound as vacuous as I feared.

Structured sharing is probably a better way to think of it than altering the cost structures of those who would normally go to a lawyer. Distributed collaboration can’t tolerate that sort of cost structure, thus the need for “structured sharing” … that’s why I brought up “scaling”.

By: Taran Rampersad

Taran Rampersad — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:17:05 +0000

The audience is different, Mike – I think pulling in Joi Ito’s abstraction of the protocol stack more would have been a mistake, but it is good that you worked your way around it so that the more geeky in the audience might make it fit.

You can please some people some of the time… you know? :-)

By: John

John — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:39:54 +0000

I knew what you meant … but we work in the same field … I never really thought of CC as a way to simplify sharing without a lawyer … but for those that normally go this route … I guess it is really time / cost saver. For most of us it is just a more structured way of sharing that we most likely would not have thought about.

The JITS people who shared the video around on facebook really liked it.