prod & ponder

I’ve been surprised, frustrated, and saddened that DCist has choosen to use images published under a Creative Commons license with the “noncommercial” restriction, even though DCist is itself a for-profit site and part of the larger commercial Gothamist LLC for-profit enterprise.

You can find an example of the misuse and discussion of it here.

I’m one of several folks who regularly contribute images to DCist. I’m glad to support the site; they’re a great group of folks and DCist is a terrific blog. Moreover, I appreciate the added exposure that my photos get when they run there.

But… like most of the people who contribute images to DCist, I also use, rely on, and value Creative Commons licenses. And I think that with that comes some duty to help make sure that CC agreements are understood and respected by sites I use and support, which DCist doesn’t seem to be doing right now.

DCist editors and writers: please reconsider what you’re doing. There are plenty of images available entirely in the public domain or under creative commons licenses which don’t have the non-commercial use restriction. And there are plenty of photographers who do use non-commercial CC licenses, but who are happy to give DCist direct permission to use their photos (by being asked or in advance through the “dcist” flickr tag). Yes, you’re violating copyrights and risking a photographer suing you for damages, and I don’t think you’d like the price tag of market rates for professional stock photography. But that’s not the main reason why I think you should stop doing it. You should stop doing it because the Creative Commons license structure is important to the internet and online culture, and it deserves your support–do it because respecting CC licenses and respecting the labor that photographers put into creating images is the right thing to do.

DCist readers: please consider commenting at DCist on the matter or writing or talking directly with DCist folks about this. I think they can be persuaded to fix this. They’re wildly bright folks, and my experience has been that their hearts are in he best of places when it comes to running DCist and having good net politics in general (like supporting the Creative Commons movement).

yesterday evening

As you can tell, after a day-long outage, the blog is now fixed. The site got attacked by a hacker who took advantage of security vulnerabilities to hijack server resources. For those of you hosting your own blog, remember what I didn’t: always make sure you’re running the latest version of your blog script, and be extra careful with the read-write security settings of your files and directories. Thanks and kudos to the system admin folks at Host Rocket, who did a fantastic job in helping locate the problem.

Ok, back to photos.

There’s a blizzard forecasted, so what to do? Go skiing, of course.

Discussion during the drive:
Me: “So, you know those times you’re sitting at home, watching news reports of all the accidents happening as people try to drive through horrible storms? And you say, ‘Geeze, don’t these idiots watch the news? What are they thinking?’ Well, I think we might be those people.”
ImaginaryGirl: “Yep.”

Thankfully, and perhaps despite sketchy judgment, everything worked out. There was good hiking and surprisingly good skiing (props to Jiminy Peak). And if that sounds overly athletic, there was also plenty of time spent flopping on the couch, eating cupcakes, and watching the Purina Incredible Dog National Championship (man, that Sinjin hauled through the agility course like nothing I’d ever seen before).

(cameraphone shot there)

Also in the bad judgment somehow gone well category: my thinking that four years away from my skis was no big thing, and that I should just hop right on the black diamond slopes. Whatever the skiing equivalent of “nothing but net” is, it was like that.

Special thanks to Jen and Jon for the invitation, hospitality, and fun.

Temple Micah held a “bowling together” event, inspired by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone.

Interesting facts to ponder from Putnam’s research…
Declining social capital rends over the last 25 years:
Attending club meetings, down 58%
Family dinners, down 33%
Having friends over, down 45%

Micah’s blogger contingent was out in full force too…

Reya (Grace’s Poppies), Barbara (Looking2Live), and David (Dsquared).

While I can appreciate the political objectives behind it, I can’t help but wince every time I see activists holding up a sign (1, 2) that reads:

“Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” - Benjamin Franklin

Because, here’s the thing: Franklin never said that. The actual quote it refers to is this:

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

So that banner is wrong on two obvious levels:
1. It’s presented as a direct quotation, when it’s actually paraphrasing a quote. (I’ll assume everyone has already heard some variant of the “reasons why accurate attribution really does matter” lecture at some point in their education.)

2. It’s a rotten paraphrase, at odds with the argument it’s referrng to. Franklin wasn’t making the absolutist argument it implies. And, to his credit, he actually does give us a more nuanced view with a framework for critical moral reasoning and judgement.

And, just to add to muddled mess of things, the history and attribution of the “correct” quote is itself in question (1, 2). And before we go too Franklin-as-liberty-poster-child, let’s contextualize Franlin’s concept of liberty with the fact that owned slaves and that his newspaper ran advetisements of slave sales.

And then there’s the fact that this absolutist view of liberty is at odds with many of the other policies being (I think rightly) advocated by those concerned with social and economic justice.

Please, let’s file that banner away as bad idea theater and move on. Catchy is fine, but not daft catchy. Personally, I’m throwing my support behind the effort to field a DC Olympic Curling Team.