COPYCENSE

“Most state governments are not actively tackling the creeping problem of digital archives and long-term access to public documents, according to the head of an industry group.

“Apart from a handful of cases, states have not devised comprehensive strategies for retaining ‘born digital’ documents. Such documents are created in electronic format and do not exist on paper.

“The state of Minnesota introduced a bill last month that would mandate the use of “open data formats” in state agencies by having them use standards-based products. By avoiding proprietary products and formats, the proposal’s backers hope to ensure access to state information.”

Martin LaMonica. States Struggling to Deal With Digital Documents. News.com. April 25, 2006.

See also:

Ingrid Marson. OpenDocument Group ‘Optimistic’ on Certification. News.com. April 20, 2006.

Minnesota House of Representatives. A Bill for an Act Relating to State Government; Requiring State Agencies to Use Open Data Formats. (H.F. No. 3971; 84th Legislative Session). March 27, 2006.

Martin LaMonica. Mass. Hands OpenDocument Reins to New CIO. News.com. January 31, 2006.

Groklaw. Peter Quinn’s First Interview. Jan. 23, 2006.

Stephen Kurkjian. Technology Adviser Quits Unexpectedly. Boston.com. December 28, 2005.

Martin LaMonica. Office Standards Battle Grinds On. News.com. December 13, 2005.

Groklaw. Peter Quinn Exonerated. Dec. 12, 2005.

Stephen Kurkjian. Review Backs Trips by Technology Chief. Boston.com. Dec. 10, 2005.

Martin LaMonica. OpenDocument Format Gathers Steam. News.com. November 10, 2005.

Hiawatha Bray. Senators Question File-Storage Shift. Boston.com. October 29, 2005

Martin LaMonica. Massachusetts Moves Ahead Sans Microsoft. News.com. September 23, 2005.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Aiming to offer newspapers a new digital publishing alternative, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday touted a software program that tries to make publications easier to read on a computer screen.

“As part of a speech at a newspaper editors’ conference in Seattle, Gates is slated to show off a program called “Times Reader,” developed by the New York Times Co., that uses the graphics power of Windows Vista to help bring the “Gray Lady” further into the digital age. The software allows users to view the digital content on any screen size or change the font size. The layout will readjust itself to neatly flow around photos and other graphic images.

Ina Fried. Microsoft, NYT Partner On Newspaper Software. News.com. April 28, 2006.

See also:

Katharine Q. Seelye. Microsoft Software Will Let Times Readers Download Paper. The New York Times. April 29, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

“Aiming to offer newspapers a new digital publishing alternative, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday touted a software program that tries to make publications easier to read on a computer screen.

“As part of a speech at a newspaper editors’ conference in Seattle, Gates is slated to show off a program called “Times Reader,” developed by the New York Times Co., that uses the graphics power of Windows Vista to help bring the “Gray Lady” further into the digital age. The software allows users to view the digital content on any screen size or change the font size. The layout will readjust itself to neatly flow around photos and other graphic images.

Ina Fried. Microsoft, NYT Partner On Newspaper Software. News.com. April 28, 2006.

See also:

Katharine Q. Seelye. Microsoft Software Will Let Times Readers Download Paper. The New York Times. April 29, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

This topic is far beyond our normal editorial scope, but I am going to make some brief comments about it because it involves music (which we do cover), and it resonates with me.

The BBC reported Saturday about the Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival, which occurred last weekend in (of all places) Hartford, CT. The article touches on a number of interesting themes, including the continuing internationalization of hip hop. This is something one rarely hears about in the United States. The core theme of the article, however, discusses how hip hop is a verbal protest vehicle in virtually every place it is heard except in the United States.

A recent international hip-hop festival which brought together rap artists from around the world has raised the question of why non-US rap is so political — whereas mainstream American rap appears frivolous.

Many of the performers at the three-day Trinity International Hip-Hop Festival in Hartford, Connecticut, were critical of the way that U.S. rap — which is by far the best-selling — appears concerned mostly with money, drugs and sex, and has little to do with its roots in the angry political expression of groups like Public Enemy or KRS One. …

But Jacqueline Springer, of the BBC’s urban music station 1Xtra, pointed out that the age of the average rap fan has decreased, which has transformed what rap artists produce. “They don’t really want to hear about your opposition to George Bush — they’d much rather hear about what you want to do with George Bush’s wife,” she said.

American hip hop always has had a symbiotic relationship with bling. (Several aspects of the historical relationship between bling and beats is addressed in Minya Oh’s book Bling Bling: Hip Hop’s Crown Jewels; 2005, Wenner Books) Still, the balance between materialism and music seems to swing inordinately in favor of materialism in today’s domestic hip hop.

At its core, hip hop is about “playing the dozens” — you make jokes about me, my clothes, and my mother, and I retaliate in jest. And to some degree, hip hop’s bling culture is just a contemporary extension of “the dozens”: I have cash (and the trinkets that go with having cash), you don’t (so you’re walking to the party instead of rolling up in the fly whip), and this means that I’ll get the girl and you won’t. (The purchasability of feminine attention always has been a standard theme in hip hop music.)

By the way, if you’ve ever watched an episode of MTV’s Yo Momma, then you’ve witnessed a perfect example of the pollination between hip hop and “the dozens.”

Even beyond the women and the snaps, hip hop artists always have been fascinated with their ability (real or imagined) to monetize with authority. Run-DMC launched its career talking about how Larry “put [us] inside his Cadillac; the chauffeur drove off and we never came back.” True heads always grin when they recall Slick Rick putting his Ballys on with six minutes remaining before showtime. Few can forget the leather and gold chains — although I’d live peacefully if I never saw a “dookie” chain again — and Jay-Z has said (accurately) “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.”

Taking things a step further, since bling equals attention, bling often has been the primary way hip hop artists have chosen to call attention to themselves. To riff off the late Ralph Wiley, bling has been the way this generation of black people has tended to shout. The difference between the bling orientation today and hip hop’s early days 30 years ago — that’s right, 30 years ago — is that back then, blingology usually was tempered with some minimal, yet clear acknowledgment that the world in which we live has some problems.

For example, “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five opens

Broken glass everywhere

People pissing on the stairs, you know they just

Don’t care

I can’t take the smell, I can’t take the noise

Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice

Rats in the front room, roaches in the back

Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat

I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get far

Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car

With very little changes, those lyrics could appear in a blues or country song because they’re about pain, protest, edge, and survival — all universal issues. My father liked “The Message” when it was released; hell, it remains one of the few rap songs he continues to appreciate today. In the eighties, radio stations regularly played “The Message,” kids bought the record, and teenagers danced to it. In other words, in hip hop’s formative years, the protest or issue song was as much a part of the culture as the bling.

In comparison, today’s hip hop features lots of bullets, bling, and booty, but very little of the perspective that manifests itself in tracks like “The Message.” Protest and commentary songs are not played on the radio and do not get aired as music videos. Further, sexuality is much more prominent now that the dominant form of promotion is visual than aural. It is potentially far more lucrative for Bubba Sparxxx to talk about Ms. New Booty than it is for him to talk about the conditions that lead to the objectification of young women.

Underlying this entire change in hip hop ethos is money. When Melle Mel discussed conditions in the South Bronx, hip hop wasn’t a billion dollar industry. It is now, cutting across fashion (Phat Farm, RocaWear, and Sean John), broadcasting, distilled spirits (Armadale vodka), film (Warner Bros.’ ATL), journalism (The Source), literature (authors Toure and Nelson George), and sports (much of the NBA). And I’d posit the main reason protest and commentary remain part of hip hop outside the U.S. is because ridiculous amounts of money haven’t infected the culture abroad to the degree that it has here. Yet.

It will be interesting to see 10 years from now, whether international hip hop retains its protest and commentary roots once money arrives and the music associates itself with bling, drugs, guns, violence, and female posteriors. I’m betting it won’t, and we’ll get another article from the BBC, this one aghast at what one MC has verbalized doing with Queen Elizabeth.

BBC News. World Hip-Hop Questions U.S. Rap. April 29, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC. CopyCense™ and CommuniK.™ are trademarks of Seso Digital LLC.

“When the Harvard Crimson reported last week that sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan’s novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, contains a number of passages that are ‘strikingly similar’ to two books by Meghan F. McCafferty, the alleged plagiarism drew national attention. On Friday, the New York Times reported that publisher Little, Brown would recall the offending book, which had apparently been part of an extraordinary $500,000 two-book deal and had been optioned by Dreamworks for a movie.

“Deliberate or not, the plagiarism was obvious. The more interesting issue, however, is what constitutes illicit copying within a specific genre. Even while apologizing, Kaavya maintained that she was writing about her own experiences. Can we still tell an “original” from a “copy,” assuming that we ever could?

“Actually, yes.”

Counterfeit Chic. Kaavyat Scriptor. April 30, 2006.

See also:

Gladwell.com. Viswanathan-gate. April 30, 3006.

Motoko Rich and Dinita Smith. Publisher to Recall Harvard Student’s Novel. The New York Times. April 28, 2006.

Dinita Smith. Aggrieved Publisher Rejects Young Novelist’s Apology. The New York Times. April 26, 2006.

David Zhou. Sophomore’s New Book Contains Passages Strikingly Similar to 2001 Novel. The Harvard Crimson. April 23, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.

Per Open Access News, a college newspaper in Minnesota is reporting a publisher is offering free textbooks.

Free textbooks. No, it’s not too good to be true. Ever since a St. Paul-based internet company began offering downloadable textbooks that contain advertisements, the concept of kicking costly textbooks to the curb seems within reach.

Freeload Press offers about 20 accounting and finance textbooks, study guides and worksheets, which can be downloaded from the company’s Web site, freeloadpress.com, as free Adobe PDF files.

Somehow, the ad-supported model of scholarly textbook publishing does not sit well with me, but it likely is something I need to get past because virtually service or good that is provided for free makes its money through advertising.

This story resonates with me, particularly now, as I prepare for my classes at Syracuse. Textbook selection always is a chore, and given my general dissatisfaction with the texts in the areas in which I teach, I always am seeking alternatives. One of the alternatives I’ve investigated is writing my own book or aggregating and editing my writings into materials I can use in lieu of a textbook.

To that end, I believe O’Reilly’s SafariU. initiative holds enough promise that I will investigate it seriously for implementation for future classes. SafariU. allows teachers to mix their own content with content from established publishers, including O’Reilly, Wharton School Publishing, Addison-Wesley, and Peachpit Press. The service also lets teachers build and distribute their own custom online course syllabus.

O’Reilly handles printing and online sales. Teachers retain the copyright to their material, while respective participating publishers retain the copyright to their material. And SafariU. is ad-free.

More than anything, SafariU. seems to be just the kind of product that lets teachers break free of the academic publishing cartel. Further, it is another in several new initiatives (including Apple’s iTunesU.) that lets teachers directly control and profit from their own intellectual property.

Anne Culver. The Next Form of Text. MSU Mankato Reporter. April 27, 2006.

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the law, business, and technology of digital content. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.