Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams's Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World is a funny kind of chimera. It's a business book — a book to help enterprises reform themselves around collaborative principles made possible by the Internet (it also talks about how education, government and NGOs can use the same principles). — Read the rest

David Weinberger sez, "The Berkman Center, under the guidance of Yochai Benkler, has produced for the FCC a 200-page report on broadband around the world. The report is now open for public comment.

In an interview on the Berkman site, Benkler gives the "take-away":

I think there are two pieces of news that will be most salient for people as they look at this report.

The Open Video Conference takes place June 19-20 in New York, and the event promises ample awesomeness.

Speakers include, NYU's Clay Shirky, Harvard's Yochai Benkler, DVD Jon, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, EFF's Corynne McSherry, and many many more. I'll be delivering a keynote on Saturday afternoon. — Read the rest

I've finally dug far enough through my pile of must-read books to have a proper look at Joi Ito's wonderful book of freely licensed photography, FreeSouls. For years, Joi has travelled the world, photographing the activists, creators, inventors, hackers and entrepreneurs he's met. — Read the rest

John Buckman, the founder of the radical, sharing-friendly, artist-paying label Magnatune, sez,

The Magnatune music service has been transitioning from a "buy album downloads" model to a "DRM-free, all-you-can-eat, pay-what-you-want" model. I believe that Magnatune is the only DRM-free all-you-can eat pay music service.

Yochai Benkler writes in with word of a collaboration between Wikipedia and Kaltura to make open, peer-production video: "Kaltura in general is an interesting effort to create an open platform for
peer production of video and rich media. Very different, and from the
perspective of collaboration more interesting, than the aggregated
distribution platform of materials created by solo creators or off-site
collaborations, which YouTube represents, or the emphasis of some other of
the newer video sites on how to achieve monetization. — Read the rest

The folks behind Steal This Film, an amazing, funny, enraging and inspiring documentary series about copyright and the Internet have just released part II of the series. I taught part one (about the PirateBay crackdown in Sweden and the founding of The Pirate Party) in my class last year, and it was one of the liveliest classes we had. — Read the rest

Carl sez, "You hear a lot of rhetoric in Washington about public-private partnerships. Sometimes rhetoric meets reality … Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase have reached an agreement for the release of a totally unencumbered repository of 1.8 million pages of federal case law, including Courts of Appeals decisions back to 1950. — Read the rest

Howard Rheingold writes in with news of the DIY Video Summit (Feb 8-10, USC, Los Angeles):

24/7: A DIY VIDEO SUMMIT
February 8-10, 2008 School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

I'm thrilled to moderate a session on Feb 9 that will include Yochai Benkler, John Seely Brown, Joi Ito, Henry Jenkins, and Lawrence Lessig.

If you're in San Diego tonight, come to the EFF Pioneer Awards fundraiser at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference. $35 gets you the good karma of contributing to the net's best freedom fighters, booze and dinner, and a chance to hear Fred von Lohmann (the guy who successfully argued the Grokster case in the 9th Circuit) debate HDNet/Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about YouTube and Viacom. — Read the rest

Next Tuesday, Mar 27, the EFF's throwing a fundraiser at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference in San Diego. The event is the presentation of the Pioneer Awards, an award that "recognizes individuals who have made significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-mediated communications or to the empowerment of individuals in using computers and the Internet." — Read the rest

This is the most incredible accolade I've ever received: I have been honored with the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, which "recognizes individuals and organizations that have made significant and influential contributions to the development of computer-mediated communications and to the empowerment of individuals in using computers and the Internet." — Read the rest

Siva sez, "Crooked Timber is hosting a great seminar on Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. CT solicited commentary essays from Henry Farrell, Dan Hunter, John Quiggin, Jack Balkin, Eszter Hargittai, and Siva Vaidhyanathan. Benkler has responded to all of them. — Read the rest

David sez,

This evening is the start of the blockbuster Yale Law School ISP Access to Knowledge (A2K) conference. The conference's major goal is to bring together different strands of the A2K movement — access to medicines, telecoms, textbooks, software, libraries, to name a few — and build normative frameworks and coalitions to pave the way for substantial political change.

David Tannenbaum sez, "Yochai Benkler just released his brand new book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, under a CC license, along with a wikinotes wiki for commentary and cooperative augmentation. The book presents Benkler's pathbreaking work on social cooperation over digital networks in a delicious romp from software to telecom to medicines in the developing world. — Read the rest

Today marks the start of an amazing two-day symposium on the economics of open content at MIT, with appearances from Richard Stallman, James Surowiecki, the creators of MIT's open courseware program, representatives from Tor Books and MIT Press, Henry Jenkins, Terry Fisher, a rep from Yahoo's Open Content Alliance, Yochai Benkler, and many other exciting speakers. — Read the rest

David sez, "Yale Law School is hosting an amazing conference this weekend on the "Global Flow of Information" that will vascillate wildly between insanely theoretical and the benignly abstract. James Grimmelmann of LawMeme is leading the liveblogging of this extravaganza, which includes talks by Yochai Benkler, Siva Vaidhyanathan and Jamie Love. — Read the rest

A panel on property versus commons:

Gregory "Deputy Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research" Rosston: companies should be allowed to bid to operate "private commons," just as Disney World (!) is a private park.

Ed: Er, sure. So all of the rights that we have in public (speech, search and seizure, etc), will exist only at the sufferance of the market and private contract law? — Read the rest

Howard Rheingold is being interviewed in the WELL's public conference about his book SmartMobs. Nice stuff.

The FCC was set up to regulate the spectrum on behalf of its owners — the
citizens. It happened in the wake of the Titanic disaster, where
"interference" was an issue.