Sara and I just watched the second episode of The WB Superstar USA and it is awesome! It takes the best part of American Idol, the terrible singers that get eliminated, and makes that the whole show. All the bad singers are told that they're good and the good singers don't make it past the first two episodes. Everyone's in on it: the judges, the audiences, the dancers. The finale will be telling the sorry saps that they actually stink. It's so cruel, but so entertaining.

If you're interested in learning some more about culture and copyright issues, here are some links:

Free Culture
This is the web site for the book. If you want to download it or buy it, start here.

Lessig Blog
Lawrence Lessig's blog. He's a law professor at Stanford and a graduate of Cambridge and Yale. His blog can keep you informed.

Public Library of Science
This is a project Lessig has worked with. It's a solution to the problem of the high cost of scientific journals, which makes it hard for libraries to offer journals for free. Scientists can upload articles, which are peer reviewed and then offered to the public for free.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
"A nonprofit group of passionate people--lawyers, volunteers and visionaries--working to protect your digital rights." You can find links about lots of legal issues here.

Creative Commons
"Some rights reserved." An alternative license that creators can use to give more rights to their readers. I'm going to look into choosing a CC license for this blog.

Free Software Foundation
The home of the GNU project, which gave us Linux and lots of other open source software. Their huge philosophy page can explain why this is so important to them.

Internet Archive
This is my favorite. It's a project to record as much information as is legally and technically possible. It includes the Wayback Machine (enter an address and see how what a site used to say) and a great audio section. I downloaded an entire live show from Waterdeep.

So things are going pretty well here at my mom's. I addressed all my newsletters today and I'll be sending them out tomorrow. My mom's leaving for New Jersey tomorrow for her new job training. So I'll have the house to myself until Saturday. Party in Hannibal...

I also wanted to update you guys on our MT 3.0 Upgrade fund. So far we have $57.35 donated. That's pretty darn good if you ask me.

Summers on brendoman.com are always interesting. Posting can be sparse sometimes, but hopefully I'll get the DSL thing worked out here and I'll be able to post regularly. I'm working on finalizing my California plans. I'll know by Friday exactly what I'm doing. All I know for sure is that on June 18th I'll be having my birthday party. So plan for that if you're going to be in the O.C. area.

Six Log: How are you using the tool?

Mena asked for trackbacks about how we use Movable Type and how the new licenses might restrict us from upgrading. I've basically laid all this out in a previous post, but I'll elaborate. Basically we are a group of friends and aquaintances who use our blogs to keep in touch with each other, entertain ourselves, and hopefully entertain and inform others. This is our main weblog, which has been around for 2 years and has been using Movable Type since June of 2002. We switched over from Blogger after we got our own hosting. We're up to over 25 authors on the main blog, 12 of whom would be defined as active. In 2003 I started hosting my friends who wanted their own blogs. Some were also switching from Blogger. Now we're up to 12 blogs. We're willing to pay money for MT 3.0, it's just that the amount required for the license we need is a little steep. We don't make any money from this site. One of our goals is to have a good site for people to go to that is 100% add free. We've actually started up an upgrade fund to help pay for the license fee. So that's the deal with our MT usage.

I'm a big fan of MT 3.0. If any of you guys want it out, I've created a guest account on my test blog. Here's the details:

Log in here.

Username: guest
Password: guest

So give it a whirl. There's not really any drastic changes aside from the TypeKey comment system, but everything is faster and the interface is a lot more user friendly. There will be plenty of new features coming in the next few months thanks to the expanded plugin system.

Stock Exchange

I need images. I use them for web design and powerpoint. Getty and Google are pretty good, but I don't like watermarks, too-small images or stealing. Stock Exchange is based in Hungary and, as far as I can tell, totally legal. There's a free and painless login if you want access to the really big pictures. You can also submit images, but you'll need a pretty good camera, they only take images with good resolutions. This site has great selection, great quality and best of all, it's totally free (for noncommercial uses).

No up-to-date book on copyright law would be complete without a section on music file-sharing. Free Culture doesn't deal with it much, but Lessig does have some comments in the afterword that are worth repeating. He says that file=sharing is a complicated problem because there are different types of sharing.

A. There are some who are using sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing CDs.

B. There are also some who are using sharing networks to sample, on the way to purchasing CDs.

C. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is no longer sold but is still under copyright or that would have been too cumbersome to buy off the Net.

D. There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or to get access that the copyright owner plainly endorses (302).

Type A sharing is illegal and for good reason. It's still up for debate whether file sharing hurts cd sales, but this type of sharing goes against the spirit and the letter of copyright law, which is designed to promote progress by giving artists access to the benefits of their creation. Type D sharing is totally legal and very useful. The tricky thing for lawmakers and programmers is to find a way to cut down on type A sharing without inhibiting type D. But what about types B and C, are they wrong? Is downloading a song to see if you want to buy a cd any worse than listening to the radio? Is downloading a song that can't be bought on cd any different from rescuing a tape from the dumpster behind the record store? The RIAA wants to fight type A sharing, but they treat all p2p sharing as if it were this type. They don't care about the fact that Napster had several legal uses. If the different kinds of sharing can be understood, then maybe we can come up with some reasonable regulations.

I should also point out that when the big companies and lobbyists start panicing about piracy, they're usually wrong. They were sure that the VCR would decimate the box office. It didn't. They thought CD burners would eliminate CD sales. Nope. Now they're saying the DVD burners and back-up software will kill DVD sales. Don't count on it. And p2p file sharing won't send P. Diddy to the poorhouse

So I stepped outside our apartment complex this morning and looked up to see a hubcap and some other little part flying off of a truck that was driving down the road. The hubcap magically missed all of the cars parked on the curb and flew down the sidewalk. The other little part flew right at me and hit me in the leg.

Nice way to start the day. I just feel sorry for the driver who won't even notice it's gone 'till later today and then wonder where it happened. Poor bastard.