I’ve culled this post together from a bunch of recent emails from various sources:

In 1930 Woody Guthrie asked that the following be printed below his published songs.

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

For Immediate Release: May 7, 2008

Background: The House Intellectual Property Subcommittee today approved H.R. 5889, the Orphan Works Act of 2008. Orphan works are works, such as photographs, music or film, or other works for which the copyright holder can’t be found by someone who wants to use the work in a way that normally would require permission. Works can become “orphaned” for a number of reasons: the owner did not register the work, the owner sold rights in the work and did not register the transfer, the owner died and his heirs cannot be found.

The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:

“We are pleased that the Subcommittee has approved this legislation with the promise to continue to discuss issues of concern with stakeholders before a full Judiciary Committee markup. Overall, we believe the bill would restore much needed balance to copyright law by freeing up for use by follow on creators so-called orphan works.

“We recognize there are some issues going forward on which we would like to work with the subcommittee before the bill is considered by the full Judiciary Committee. The ‘notice of use’ archive provision, would impose onerous filing requirements on users without providing any real benefits to owners by requiring users to submit summaries of their searches along with a notice of intended use. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) on behalf of herself and Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), noted during the markup that there are already provisions in the bill that obviate the need for such an archive.

“We thank Subcommittee Chairman Berman, Ranking Member Coble and their staff for taking the time to work with us. We look forward to working with them on these issues of concern.”

more info >>

http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2008/05/support-the-orp.html

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1478

Definition of an Orphan Work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1553

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2008/05/07/asmp-supports-orphan-works-bill/

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1553

Ken Robinson will be in Baltimore as a part of the Creativity Summit at Center Stage,
and there is a free lunch of some sort. He’s consented to let Radar Redux stream the event – and i’ll be doing some of the streaming with Jack Livingston.

Thursday May 22 – 9:30 to 3:30.

To register to attend for free go to GBCA site and click on the registration.

Here is his TED talk, entitled: Do Schools Today Kill Creativity?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY[/youtube]

…and if there was a chair, desk, papers, and a cat inside it would look just like my studio. without a cat it would look like my office.

here are its’ relatives.

i’m getting reports that this blog isn’t working on firefox – not sure why, trying to figure it out.

many of us have spent, and will continue to spend, a lot of time on the mid-atlantic states re-accreditation process, due early next year.

while searching for clip art for a project, i somehow found myself at The North American Association of Unaccredited Colleges and Universities. it made my day. please visit and explore, i don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

A SAMPLE LESSON from TAGOMA INSTITUTE OF TIE-KWAN-DOH:
Step 1: Place hands free option on cellphone and attach to your face.
Step 2: Find a random person.
Step 3: Battle them.
Step 4: We talk you through it.
Step 5: You tell us what you learned.
.

Join the action and learn more at http://bang.calit2.net/5yearsofwar/

We are extending the action until March 21st to coincide with calls to “On
M20 Shut it Down” from Chicago Action Community and “March on M21″
from SDS.

More info at:

http://shiftshapers.gnn.tv/blogs/27340/Chicago_On_M20_Shut_It_Down
http://www.unconventionalaction.org/
http://www.newsds.org/march20/

Chinese translation here by EmBlack
http://emblack.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/5-years-of-war/

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND06VRnuelY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81TPfSpKXrA[/youtube]

i love this project and its’ documentation.

the combination of the terrestrial and aerial footage in the documentation really brought out the complex interactions that occurred as the elements of the event drift in and out of phase with the simple gesture and intention to release, follow and retrieve a camera attached to a bunch of helium filled balloons. the piece was clearly a collaborative effort from start to finish and that was great to see.

if you’ve read any of the other things on this blog you probably realize that i love the intersection of simultaneous and linear time, and this project (and its’ documentation) seemed, at least to me, to portray that dynamic. while watching the footage it occurred to me that perhaps when our intentions are being efficiently realized we experience the simultaneous, and when they’re not, we experience the sequential.

i also detected a difference in persona between the american and german participants – and smiled as the american guy occasionally muttered ‘fuck!’ as things unfolded – because i, an american who has also incorporated balloons, the weather, cities, and the public into my own work, often catch myself muttering ‘fuck!’ as my own projects ‘drift in and out of phase’. when i watched the san francisco footage the amount of fuck muttering seemed to increase proportionally with the amount of american participation. i digress.

i visited their site and watched some other versions in other cities and a few things crossed my mind:

i imagine that running this project near large bodies of water would complicate the process. i’d do a test launch in each site by attaching a weight to a bunch of balloons first – just to see what’s what.

it might also be interesting to attach a phone running something like qik (streaming video from a phone camera) so that the video could be logged whether the camera was retrieved or not. if they bought a used nokia 6682 (or something) with an unlimited data plan it might not cost much more than the current version, even if the phone was never rescued – and if the phone disappeared they could just report it stolen and start over – or, of course, they could extend the work by incorporating whatever the people who found the phone would do with it. i suppose they could also add some GPS stuff with a suitably enabled phone and use that data, etc.

but it is beautiful as it is.

Pearl Montana Exploration and Production LTD, of Calgary, Alberta, seeks a permit to drill oil wells in the Great Salt Lake about five miles southwest of Rozel Point and the Spiral Jetty. Drilling activities will be based on floating barges anchored to the lake bottom.

The public may comment on the proposal through Feb. 13 through the state Resource Development Coordinating Committee, E-210 State Capitol Complex, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84114, or http://governor.utah.gov/planning/rdcc.htm.

The public may also express their concerns by sending emails to John Harja who runs the state’s public land policy coordinating office: johnharja@utah.gov

By RANDY KENNEDY >>

An oil company’s plan to begin exploratory drilling near the remote site of Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” along the Great Salt Lake in Utah has stirred an impassioned response from artists and others who fear that the project could endanger that massive artwork. The jetty, a 1,500-foot-long curlicue of salt crystals, rocks and mud jutting into the lake, was completed by Smithson in 1970, three years before he died in a plane crash. The State of Utah, which must approve any plan for drilling in the area, decided recently to extend a period for public comment on the proposal until Feb. 13. John Harja, who runs the state’s public land policy coordinating office, said on Tuesday that the office had received 900 letters, e-mail messages and calls about the issue in the last several days. Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, issued a statement calling the jetty “a significant cultural site” and saying that the trust was “deeply concerned about the potential harm that energy development could bring” to it.

from Jaron Lanier’s One-Half of a Manifesto

“…In Turing’s famous thought experiment, a human judge is asked to determine which of two correspondents is human, and which is machine. If the judge cannot tell, Turing asserts that the computer should be treated as having essentially achieved the moral and intellectual status of personhood.

Turing’s mistake was that he assumed the only explanation for a successful computer entrant would be that the computer had become elevated in some way; by becoming smarter, more human. There is another, equally valid explanation of a winning computer, however, which is that the human had become less intelligent, less humanlike.

An official Turing test is held every year, and while the substantial cash prize has not been claimed by a program as yet, it will certainly be won sometime in the coming years. My view is that this event is distracting everyone from the real Turing tests that are already being won. Real, though miniature, Turing tests are happening all the time, every day, whenever a person puts up with stupid computer software.

For instance, in the United States, we organize our financial lives in order to look good to the pathetically simplistic computer programs that determine our credit ratings. In doing this, we make ourselves stupid in order to make the computer software seem smart. In fact, we continue to trust the credit-rating software even though there has been an epidemic of personal bankruptcies during a time of very low unemployment and great prosperity.

We have caused the Turing test to be passed. There is no epistemological difference between artificial intelligence and the acceptance of badly designed computer software.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zuhCbNHJ2A[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zD1GQJHcq0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRx43ud9tas[/youtube]