Huge and important news: free licenses upheld

huge and important news: free licenses upheld (Lessig Blog)

So for non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important. But trust me, this is huge.

I am very proud to report today that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (THE "IP" court in the US) has upheld a free (ok, they call them "open source") copyright license, explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. (The specific license at issue was the Artistic License.) This is a very important victory, and I am very very happy that the Stanford Center for Internet and Society played a key role in securing it. Congratulations especially to Chris Ridder and Anthony Falzone at the Center.

In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you're simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.

Important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court.

As Lessig says, this is huge. And as filkertom points out, this applies way beyond free software. For example, all of my songs are published under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license.

ETA: Full text and analysis on Groklaw

River: Talking with you

This is the second of a series of three River posts about communication and conversation: the first was "Talking long distance", and the third will be titled "Crosstalk". This one is about conversation: one-on-one and very small groups. It also applies to similar situations, like filk circles and song-swapping sessions.

I really have three major problems with conversations. The first is paying attention.

I don't multitask. I'll go into this in more detail when I discuss crosstalk; for now it's probably enough to know that to call me "easily distracted" is an understatement on the same order as calling a plasma torch "rather warm". If there's anything involving words where I can see it or hear it -- a book, another conversation, filk on the CD player, a video on TV -- I'm going to have a lot of trouble paying attention to the person I'm trying to have a conversation with.

If I was already paying attention to something else, you're going to have trouble getting my attention in the first place. This is especially true if I'm reading. A book, magazine, or computer will grab my attention to the point where I simply don't notice anything else in my environment. If you think I'm listening to you, and there are words where I can see them, I'm probably paying more attention to them than to you. There's a good reason why I don't read while I'm walking, and a couple of dented lampposts scattered around Norwalk, Connecticut where I grew up.

If there's anything else going on, in other words, you're going to have trouble getting my attention in the first place, and even more trouble holding it. On the other hand, I'm not usually very shy about moving the conversation off to someplace quiet, if that seems to be appropriate. It's one of the very few things I'm not shy about, these days.

A closely related problem is that my train of thought is easily derailed. If I get distracted or interrupted while I'm thinking, I'll have to backtrack and try to reconstruct what I was about to say. It might take a while. One of the worst things you can do when talking to me is try to complete a sentence for me -- your guess is almost invariably going to be wrong, and it's likely to blow what I was really about to say clean out of my head for a while. Please don't.

If I get interrupted while I'm talking it's also possible that I'll just raise my voice to talk over what I perceive as an increased noise level. As I've pointed out upstream, this is usually perceived as shouting.

There's a related problem here, too; because I don't multitask, if I'm abusing my turn by ranting or blathering I'm hard to shut up. I know that this is a problem, and won't be offended if you simply tell me to "shut up!" Really. Putting your hand up also works, but only if I'm where I can see you.

 

My second problem is that I'm not very aggressive about taking a turn.

As a result, I have trouble talking with more than one person. If there are two other people nearby, I'm likely to let them talk to one another, unless I have something I think I need to bring into the conversation or they make an effort to include me by asking me questions. This is pretty rare except where the topic of conversation is some area where I have actual expertise, such as computers or music, and so have something to say that people are sufficiently interested in to ask me about.

Song circles are slightly different; in a sufficiently-small circle, say five or six people, there's likely to be a tendency to go around the circle taking turns, even if the occasional follower gets inserted into the flow. I can do that. I can even strum my guitar to get attention, if there aren't too many people. When the circle gets bigger, though, you'll either find me off in a corner listening, or out in the hallway swapping songs with a handful of friends.

This is also related to attention; I simply can't follow multiple conversations, or pay attention to anything if I'm busy strategizing how to get a turn or what I want to say next.

One thing I generally don't do, though, is wave people away when I'm talking to somebody, unless the conversation is very personal, or very deep and intense, or I know that the person I'm talking to wants to keep it private. I'll just let friends drift in, and eventually drop back into listening mode or drift away. And even with a private conversation, some people have priority: my family, for example, or anyone with an urgent message or that I urgently need to speak to.

Knowing what happens to me in a crowd, though, it might be better if I waved people away more often. Or get better at moving the conversation to someplace more private.

 

My third problem is that I'm shy, especially with people I don't know. This means that I have trouble starting a conversation in the first place.

These days I'll usually try to talk to the person next to me in an airplane, at a table during a conference, standing in line... Context often provides an opening: "how's the con going for you?" is always a good one. But if they don't keep it going, I'll just go back to whatever I brought to read. If all the other person does is answer my question, I won't be ready with a followup.

My usual mode of operation at parties or other gatherings, if I can't find someone to talk to, is to hang out on the edges of a small group and hope somebody notices me. This rarely works, for obvious reasons. Not sure what to do about that.

This is, however, probably the only area where I actually have some hope for improvement. I can change my behavior, even though it might be frightening or painful, if I know what I ought to change it to. As I've indicated above, I've already gotten better about trying to talk to the people next to me, and I'll take suggestions on other possible techniques. I can't change my problems with crosstalk and attention, and I really don't want to become the kind of person who can seize control of (i.e. hog) a conversation. I'd like to get better at dealing with the hogs I occasionally encounter on panels at cons, but I'm not sure how to go about that, either.

A related, though perhaps less serious, problem is not knowing when a conversation is over. Have I mentioned that I don't read body language very well? I have trouble telling whether there's something else you wanted to say. And often I'll say something to Colleen while I'm on my way to do something unrelated, and get completely derailed if she actually says something in reply. It just doesn't occur to me sometimes that I might have started a conversation by accident.

 

A slightly more general problem that I've mentioned in connection with phone conversations is that my memory for anything that I've heard, as opposed to read, is practically nonexistant. That book you told me I ought to read? That subject you asked me never to talk about in your presence? That greeting you wanted me to pass on to Colleen? I've probably forgotten it, unless you've allowed me time to write it down. If I remember, I'll garble it -- possibly very badly -- unless I've had a chance to read it back to you to make sure I've gotten it right. I know that some people have a very exact memory for conversation, and find this totally incomprehensible. Deal with it.

 

I do have a couple of non-problems. (Whether they're actually advantages or not is an open question; it probably depends on who I'm talking to.) The main one is that I'm comfortable with silence.

To some extent I've gotten that way out of necessity: I often have to pause to compose what I'm going to say next, and I often run out of things to say altogether. Most people seem to feel that they have to jump in and fill such a gap in the conversation immediately. I don't. If neither of us has anything to say at some point, I'm OK with waiting for a while.

This even works on the phone, by the way.

Another non-problem is that I have very few limits on where or how deep a conversation can go. Something that started out as pleasant chatter about the cuisine in the hotel restaurant could very well pass through filk music, theoretical physics, cosmology, religion, golden-age science fiction, and early 20th Century poetry on its way to life, love, loss, grieving and consolation. I don't compartmentalize my life the way some people do, and there are very few aspects of it I won't talk about, even to comparative strangers. So much of it is in my blog, my songs, scattered around my archived Usenet posts, that I have very little left to be secretive about.

I don't want to take a conversation to places you don't want to go, but you'll have to steer me away yourself. Possibly more than once: I believe I mentioned that my verbal memory is unreliable. And use words; I also don't read body language very well, and won't be able to tell whether something I've said makes you uncomfortable unless you tell me. I'll uaually try to deflect you in turn from the things that simply don't interest me (most sports, for example), or that contain obvious landmines (fanish politics). Other than that I'm quite prepared to follow you down whatever rabbit-hole you want to dive into.

You'll also have to tell me, explicitly and possibly more than once, what parts of what you're telling me have to be considered confidential. I'm OK with non-disclosure agreements and trade secrets, but there's a reason why I prefer to work with open source software, and it applies to my personal life as well. This applies in spades if there's something you don't want me to share with Colleen.

A final non-problem: I'm occasionally known for going into "Middle-Sized Bear mode". There will be another post on this soon, but for now I'll just say that some people seem to find me comforting to be around, even if I don't have much to say. (There's probably no truth to the rumor that this is why Colleen married me; I think she just wanted someone to scratch her back.)

 

And finally, an invitation. If you spot me at a convention, I'm always up for a good conversation unless I'm horribly busy with something. Just grab my attention, if you can -- a hug usually works.