A few weeks ago I gave a talk at Open World Forum. Slides (odp, pdf, slideshare), video (archive.org, YouTube):
I rushed through my final slides and promised to expand on them virtually, which I’ve done here with more slides (odp, pdf, slideshare), or watch a video narration of same (archive.org, YouTube):
Thanks to Open World Forum co-president Louis Montagne and Knowledge Commons track leader Florence Devouard for inviting me to participate!
I backed Novacut’s first, unsuccessful, Kickstarter campaign last year because I think that new tools for distributed collaborative creation and curation are important to the success of free culture (which I just said is a lame name for intellectual freedom, but I digress) and Novacut’s description seemed to fit the bill:
We’re developing a free open-source video editor with a unique distributed design:
- Distributed workflow – collaboratively edit video with other artists over the Internet
- Distributed storage – seamlessly store and synchronize video files across multiple computers and the cloud
- Distributed rendering – seamlessly spread rendering and encoding across multiple computers and the cloud
I didn’t investigate whether Novacut had a feasible plan. My pledge was an expressive vote for the concept of new tools for distributed collaboration.
Novacut is making another go of it at Kickstarter, and it looks like they’ll succeed. I just pledged again.
However, I’m saddened by how much of philanthropy is not also carefully instrumental. The only low barrier way to move in this direction (I’d prefer futarchist charity) that I know of is criticism, so hats off to Danny Piccirillo for his criticism of Novacut fundraising. I’m further saddened that such criticism is not welcomed. I would be honored that someone found a project I am involved in or a fan of worth the time to criticize and thankful for the free publicity.
Now, I’m looking forward to see what Novacut delivers, and/or what Novacut ideas other video editor projects implement.
Speaking of delivery, I noticed today a new crowdfunding site targeting free software and Brazil, makeITopen. According to a writeup, it appears to have a couple interesting twists. Projects that do not reach their thresholds have donations not fully returned to donors, but only as credits within the system (unlike Kickstarter and others, where pledges are not collected until a project has reached its threshold). More interestingly, there is a process for donors to approve (or not) the software delivered by the project. This sort of thing is probably hard to get right, and I fully expect makeITopen to fail, but I hope it is hugely successful, and think that getting approval right could be very useful. At least for donors who wish to be instrumental.
Addendum 20110730: The best two comments on the Novacut criticism kerfuffle: Jono Bacon saying be calm, but onus is on Novacut to explain, and Jason Gerard DeRose (Novacut lead), explaining how Novacut’s intended high-end userbase demands a different program than do casual video editors, and that there’s plenty of scope for cooperation on underlying components. Congratulations to Novacut for meeting its Kickstarter threshold, and good luck to Novacut, PiTiVi (the working editor many critics advocated directing resources toward), and GStreamer and Gnonlin (two underlying components in common). Onward to killing King Kong with FLOSS.
I don’t know a whole lot about Bitcoin, but from what I’ve heard (a) governments, unable to fight math, will soon crumble, or (b) Bitcoin is nothing more than a scam meant to enrich its inventor and early adopters and increase the gap between haves and have-nots, or (c) both.
I’d guess none of the above. If Bitcoin speculation, increased acceptance of Bitcoin for real goods, or both continue apace such that the Bitcoin phenom grows for a long period of time (all questionable), I predict that governments and any other entity with a large measure of control over how it can demand payment will launch their own cryptocurrencies, seeking endowments for themselves much as Bitcoin’s inventor and early adopters may have gained.
First a quick aside on the welfare and distributional effects of an endowment for cryptocurrency initiators, and Bitcoin’s in particular. It doesn’t matter all that much, at least in theory:* with zero transaction costs (perhaps cryptocurrencies will get us closer to that ideal) resources will be put to their most efficient uses, regardless of initial distribution. Of course reality will diverge from perfect theory, but given gross inefficiencies that exist in the world today, it’s hard to say that whatever change could be engendered by Bitcoin taking off would certainly be worse. Regarding distributional effects (i.e., equality), it’s hard to see how at least in the short term potentially massive wealth for the Bitcoin inventor and early adopters changes much. It is doubtful these people are among the pre-Bitcoin megarich. Scam or not, I don’t see how Bitcoin distribution increases or decreases inequality significantly unless one expects Bitcoin to become the only currency in the world. I consider this highly unlikely.
Because, repeating close of first paragraph: once Bitcoin is considered as tested and important, any entity that can would be crazy to not seek a windfall for itself by initiating a new cryptocurrency with rules such that it can gain a significant fraction of the wealth embodied in the currency for itself, as the Bitcoin developer and early adopters supposedly have. A significantly powerful entity (i.e., a government) would be significantly tempted to initiate new cryptocurrencies regularly, just as the temptation holds to inflate traditional fiat currencies now. These entities, and many others besides, will also want to experiment with cryptocurrency rules (e.g., Bitcoin’s decreasing minting to a set limit, constant growth, other?).
I have no idea how any of this will play out. On one hand, what are the competitive pressures that will drive cryptocurrency evolution? Is it conceivable that network effects could result in only one cryptocurrency holding value, perhaps Bitcoin? On the other hand, if cryptocurrencies become economically important, they will surely have deep and far reaching effects, even if those don’t include the sudden collapse of governments and the rise of a Bitcoin oligarchy. It seems well worth thinking ahead about these effects from a variety of perspectives: one example.
Also recommended: Bitcoin, what took ye so long? on strands of thought preceding Bitcoin, by Nick Szabo. Indeed, go read everything Szabo has written.
I understand that emotions run high concerning Bitcoin. “Race to the bottom” in the title of this post is merely intended to provoke. The phrase is often abused. Feel free to disabuse me of any incorrect thoughts.
Oh, and feel free to send ฿ to 153ofsZ1PrnCnDGjvWAenRJc53TRhR9BzK.☻
A Day Against DRM post. I posted another at Creative Commons.
Critiques of Digital Restrictions Management fall into about 10 categories:
Eventually I may link the above bullets to the relevant posts on DRM I’ve made over the years.
Defective By Design, a project of the Free Software Foundation, coordinates the Day Against DRM and various other anti-DRM actions. It is pretty clear that several of the problems with DRM listed above, particularly 2-5, are inimical to the FSF’s values. I sometimes think the linkage to core values of software freedom could be made stronger in anti-DRM campaigns, but these are not easily packaged messages. I also think there’s usually a missed opportunity in anti-DRM campaigns to present free software (and maybe free culture) as the only systemic alternative to creeping anti-freedom technologies such as DRM.
I began writing a post for Day Against DRM because I wanted to pose a question concerning DRM’s competitive threat to free software: how significant is it in today’s circumstances, and how significant in theory?
In today’s circumstances, the use of DRM that does not support free software platforms by popular media services (currently Netflix is probably most significant; DVDs with DRM have always been a problem) seems like a major barrier to more people using free software.
In theory, it isn’t clear to me that DRM must be a competitive threat to free software adoption (though it would remain a threat to software freedom and nearby). If a mostly free software platform were popular enough, DRM implementations will follow — most obviously Android.
However, I would also hope the dominance of free software would create conditions in which DRM is less pertinent. I would love to see enumerated and explored the current and in-theory competitive threats to free software posed by DRM, and vice versa.
Apart from curiosity about what the New York Times forecasts for the project and how they arrived at same, I really don’t care one way or the other about the upcoming New York Times paywall.
However, the paywall’s convoluted pricing cries out for taking the form of Kickstarter project backer levels. I haven’t done justice to the NYT plan and have done injustice to well-crafted Kickstarter project backer levels I recently admired. Apologies to all.
Addendum 2011-03-22: Thanks to Kickstarter for appreciating and blogging about this post. I didn’t mean to suggest “the whole thing would work best as a Kickstarter project: funding goal + tiered reward options + the assurance that you will only be charged if they do indeed survive the death of print/revolt of the internet” but that’s certainly correct! For some of the reasons why, extrapolate from Timothy B. Lee’s two recent posts on the paywall, Shoe-Leather Reporting at the New York Times and Misguided Moralism in the Paywall Debate. For a future with good journalism, Kickstarter is of far more relevance than any paywall.
The utterer of “business model” has attempted to raise their status with a superfluous word and has only confused whatever the issue at hand. The utterer is probably among the confused. The listener obtains only entropy and lower relative status. A punch serves to equalize the situation.
In inappropriate conveyance of status, “business model” bears likeness to beginning a statement with “So, â€:
Starting a sentence with “so†uses the whiff of logic to relay authority.
Ugly stuff.
Vivek Wadhwa, my favorite TechCrunch writer, seeks to educate the confused (strikethrough added):
Developing the right product is hard. But what is harder is building a good business
model.
However, this and other uses throughout the article only demonstrate the superfluousness of “model”.
*metaphorically
†with scare quotes, or snarky tone, is ok; beware of inadvertent homage
Congratulations on your election and tomorrow’s inauguration as Oakland mayor.
I ranked Rebecca Kaplan ahead of you, but in truth my expressive rationale for doing so could just as well have favored you: a progressive Asian American woman represents a defining characteristic of what makes Oakland special and its future just as much as does a green lesbian (who is also an American and a woman, but such is identity politics).
Expressiveness aside, expectations for positive outcomes from your term as mayor are pretty low (note emphasis on outcomes; everyone knows you’ll put in more hours than recent Oakland mayors). Oakland still has a terrible crime problem, and city finances are beyond terrible. I suspect if there were betting markets on outcomes related to these problems, current prices would predict that under your leadership crime will get worse (relative to comparable cities; of course national trends may determine absolute direction of change), chief police Anthony Batts will quit, the city will teeter on bankruptcy, your response will be to ‘social program us to death’, and you will be a one term mayor, succeeded by Kaplan, Joe Tuman, or John Russo.
Low expectations can be a blessing, if you’re willing to take steps to smash them and secure your re-election and legacy as Oakland’s most successful mayor in decades.
First, crime. Blaming the problem on poverty, racism, poor schools, unemployment, etc., isn’t going to cut it, neither as discourse nor as the stereotypical actions resulting, loosely characterized as “building youth centers”. Most voters aren’t that stupid (well, they are, but in other directions when it comes to crime). Fortunately, one can be a good progressive, acknowledge that crime is a major problem, especially for the disadvantaged, and take smart, progressive-compatible steps to smash crime. Check out Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Aaron Swartz’s essay on crime:
Such things are a frustration for white suburbanites, but for poor people stuck in the ghetto, they’re a nightmare. Crime is yet another disadvantage and a particularly noxious one at that. Even aside from all the other indignities suffered by the poor, just imagining life in a crime-ridden neighborhood is enough to make your skin crawl.
…
So there’s the question: How can we have less crime with less punishment?
Here are the no-brainer steps you can take on crime:
Next, finances. Similarly no-brainer suggestions:
Beyond the above mandatory issues, a few less pressing but visionary actions for you to consider adding to your mayoral legacy:
Here’s to great outcomes for Oakland, and your incredible success as mayor!
Mike Linksvayer
Golden Gate District, Oakland
Thought of while microblogging (emphasis added):
@glynmoody … I find it nice that movement gelling on both govt-skeptic and market-skeptic sides eg c4sif.org and p2pfoundation.net
As one moves toward increasing skepticism of both mechanisms, one might focus more on institutional design (wherein there is a huge space for exploration: two areas I’ve occasionally rambled about are commons and futarchy, both applicable to arrangements across state and market), as everything is broken and needs fixing. If one is much more skeptical about one mechanism than the other, one will assume the more confidence-inspiring mechanism will adequately check any problems of the other — e.g., so-called Masonomics:
At the University of Chicago, economists lean to the right of the economics profession. They are known for saying, in effect, “Markets work well. Use the market.”
At MIT and other bastions of mainstream economics, most economists are to the left of center but to the right of the academic community as a whole. These economists are known for saying, in effect, “Markets fail. Use government.”
Masonomics says, “Markets fail. Use markets.”
Presumably the prototypical Masonomist on the above spectrum would be far on the left (extremely skeptical of the state) and in the middle (somewhat skeptical of markets), leading such a person to always favor market solutions (the state being a lost cause), with more emphasis on the design of market institutions than someone merely confident in the market and skeptical of the state might. Schools of socialism that roughly mirror Masonomics must exist — “Governments fail. Use government [carefully].” — I just don’t know their names, so I put “rational socialism” on the spectrum.
It seems that from many places on the spectrum, one might beneficially increase skepticism of one’s preferred mechanism, so as to focus on making that mechanism work better, and thus “win” more in the long term. Admittedly, this might seem an awful tradeoff for an activist focused on bashing (whatever they see as) evil in the short term. Further, one genuinely interested in improving the world as opposed to making ideological points might focus on improving mechanisms that make criticism and improvement of all mechanisms easier (nothing remotely new about this observation) — these are public goods that facilitate the provision of more public goods.
Completely coincidentally (noted while writing this post), David Nolan died today. His name is associated with a fairly well known biaxial political spectrum. Nolan also founded the strategically unsound U.S. Libertarian Party. If it mattered at all, and weren’t in bad taste, I’d suggest it die with him!
My favorite local weekly, the East Bay Express (I loved their print design and long-form stories in the 1990s; after a couple ownership changes they are still good for other reasons, e.g., prolific reporter Robert Gammon) has a story (actually a blog entry, hopefully something of it makes it to print) that very concisely describes prediction markets and states that “TaxCannabis2010 is currently predicted to win” by traders at Intrade.
I’m happy to see EBX cite Intrade and that the initiative is predicted to win, with two caveats.
The market currently gives the initiative a 54% chance of winning. That means a 46% chance of losing. Not remotely a sure thing. Closing prices chart below.
It’s utterly ridiculous to put marijuana users, farmers, sellers, etc. in jail. But this is not obvious to a number of people, or marijuana would not be illegal. I will be surprised if anti-initiative ads will claim that marijuana legalization will lead to an increase in cocaine use, a crime wave, decrease in test scores, and more. So what would really make me happy with regards to prediction markets and citation of the same would be contracts on cocaine use etc. in California conditioned on whether the initiative wins.
Thursday I’m on a Web 2.0 Expo panel that should be interesting, as I just wrote on the Creative Commons blog.
I post here because I’m pleased that the Web 2.0 Expo blog asked my fellow panelist Jack Herrick a version of the obvious question (once they went off-topic into copyright policy):
Kaitlin: Let’s imagine a world without copyright or the need to attribute your content source. Do you think artists and writers would be hesitant to create or able to if they can’t make money on it? How do creatives cope in this world?
Jack: There are lots of reasons people create things in this world that don’t include money. People create for personal joy, to share with others, to build reputation and myriad other reasons. I doubt the artists of the beautiful cave drawings in Lascaux, France were paid. I doubt that all artists in our future will be paid. Yet creativity won’t stop. The beauty of what the combination of open licenses and the web brings is that creators who wish to create for non-monetary reasons can now reach a broad audience and a willing body of collaborators. I don’t think we need to fear that non-monetary creation will completely replace paid creative work. But we should all rejoice that the web is offering an venue for non-professional creativity that wasn’t drawing such a large audience before.
Why isn’t this question asked more often? Note this is far from an ideal phrasing — the nut should be global welfare, not how the class we currently deem creators might cope.
