This one is for readers who develop and distribute their source code which may or may not contain source code licensed by other developers.

Microsoft is trying to loosen up and make less legalese on some of their software licensing with their new Shared Source licenses.

Microsoft Corp. is slashing the number of licenses it will use for its Shared Source Initiative from now on, while at the same time radically shortening and simplifying the text of those licenses. The move, which will be announced on Wednesday morning at Oscon, the O’Reilly European Open Source Convention in Amsterdam, will see Microsoft cutting back the more than 10 Shared Source licenses that currently exist to only three template, or core, licenses.

These new shared licenses include the following licenses, which I read through and made brief descriptions for my own reference (shared here with readers, of course):

Microsoft Permissive License (Ms-PL) - view, modify, redistribute source code for commercial or non-commercial. Least restrictive, most open.

Microsoft Community License (Ms-CL) - allows for both commercial and non-commercial modification and redistribution of licensed software using a file-by-file basis, so if you want to have specific components released with source code with less strict licensing, Ms-CL could be useful. Intent is to keep community-based code available to to community, while allowing companies to commercialize and license under their own licensing terms value added code that interacts with the community code. Ms-CL is royalty free code.

Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL) - source code cannot be used for other than viewing and reference purposes. It cannot be reused. Microsoft will commonly use this for developer libraries where modification is not required to use the source code. The transparency is important so the developer can understand what the underlying library is doing so s/he can better interact with the source code.

I like the simplistic language for these licenses. They are definitely more user/developer-friendly. Thank you, Microsoft!

Remember those creative JibJab guys who made that political vidoe parody along with Woody Guthrie’s This Land For You and Me song? They were sued and ducked legal jabs over copyright infringment and have begun to enjoy some commercial success with Budweiser and others, but has success made them hypocrites?

BoingBoing and WFMU point to a story that says JibJab’s lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to the creator of a “mashup” video that’s become quite popular recently. The video uses a 9-second clip of the This Land parody, and it’s hard to look at in any way that isn’t covered by fair use. Unfortunately, it looks like some people are thinking fair use only goes in one direction.

This is already replaying the whole “what is fair use?” discussion. Sadly, JibJab’s green infusion seems to have given them selective Fair Use amnesia, or at least that could be the perspective of many who follow the story from beginning to end. From victims to overlords thanks to one C&D or just bad legal advice? You decide.

Ok, a rare political break in the tech from moi.

I just saw footage on CNN of anti-war activist, Cindy Sheehan, being led away in handcuffs. Did she ever get that meeting with President Bush? Seems like it would have been a whole lot easier for Bush to meet with her for a few minutes than the continued major news exposure this woman keeps receiving. Instead, it seems the President stood his ground and not even a White House aide would come speak to the anti-war protesters. Congrats to the Commander-in-Chief for showing how easy it is for him to ignore a mother who lost her son.

What did Sheehan and the dozens of others who were arrested do? The LA Times explains:

Outside the White House, Bill Mitchell, 54, of Atascadero, Calif., said, “We are here to bring an end to this war. No more blood for oil. No more Iraqi and American blood in our children’s names. We are here to bring them home.” As police moved in on the protesters, the demonstrators sang Amazing Grace, This Little Light of Mine, and other songs. U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Scott R. Fear said, “it’s a peaceful demonstration. We are going to take our time arresting them.” The demonstrators were given three warnings, after which they were arrested for demonstrating without a permit.

So you need a permit to demonstrate in front of the White House? I suppose that makes sense for security reasons, but geez, how much time does it take to come out and address a group of protesters? Wouldn’t this be a more sensible approach? Come out, make a statement, listen to their protest and let them ask questions for a few minutes and then politely request for them to disperse. If they don’t disperse after that, without an official permit, then arrest them. Maybe this actually happened and the news isn’t reporting that?

If this isn’t the case, then it seems that Sheehan got locked up for repeatedly being asked not to protest on the sidewalk in front of the White House without a permit, when all she ever asked for — as best I have been able to follow — is the President to give up a few minutes of his time and speak to her.

What is this going to hurt?

Let’s be realistic here, Bush was taking a month’s vacation — which to his credit he cut short due to Hurricane Katrina — so certainly somewhere in his vacation schedule he could have squeezed in some time for Cindy Sheehan? Couldn’t he?

Apparently some people (red staters?) have been complaining to Google that the top results for ‘failure’ and the phrase ‘miserable failure’ are turning up the White House’s official biographical page for President Bush.

Google’s Director of Consumer Web Products, Marissa Mayer explains this phenomenon:

By using a practice called googlebombing, however, determined pranksters can occasionally produce odd results. In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush’s website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases. We don’t condone the practice of googlebombing, or any other action that seeks to affect the integrity of our search results, but we’re also reluctant to alter our results by hand in order to prevent such items from showing up.

What people should be complaining about is the quality of the speech he gave last night. One of my friends remarked that the President’s drooping jaw looked like he had a stroke. That speech was missing two very important words that many people needed to hear in this country:

“I’m sorry.”

Update: using the following neat tool, you can create your own Bush speech!

The Bush Administration apparently isn’t grooving on the concept of a .xxx domain structure for a virtual red light district for adult sites. They want more time to review the situation.

An anonymous reader writes “The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography. This is despite the the .xxx domain being approved in June and New.net selling domain names using the .xxx suffix for many months before the approval.”

It’s rare when I agree with the Bush administration on anything these days, but I’m sure our reasons for not wanting to see this adult-only district are probably much different.

This .xxx thing is going to benefit the registrars more than anybody else. Don’t fall for the sucker pitch that it’s about protecting the children or creating a special place for only adult sites, blah, blah, blah. The problem is almost no adult webmasters are going to redirect their existing, established .com, .net, etc traffic to a .xxx domain just because there is a special place for it, so even with this special area you’re going to have the huge adult sites still operating where they always have been and thus the same filtering/censoring issues that still exist today.

All this will do is make some people feel good that there is a special place for adult content online (and I wonder how long it will be before mainstream sites start operating off of .xxx domains for the ’shock’ factor?). Also, the price of these domains is higher than dot coms, which certainly leaves a musty odor. I’ve talked to numerous adult webmasters and very few plan to be buying .xxx domains.

The following article might be way premature and reaching somewhat, but it has some interesting research data suggesting that Google is preparing to at the very least reduce its own hosting by becoming a hosting company and at best, possibly someday providing free and/or low cost WiFi to others. Far fetched? Business 2.0 is calling this GoogleNet:

One of the cheapest ways would be for Google to blanket major cities with Wi-Fi, and evidence gathered by Business 2.0 suggests that the company may be trying to do just that. In April it launched a Google-sponsored Wi-Fi hotspot in San Francisco’s Union Square shopping district, built by a local startup called Feeva. Feeva is reportedly readying more free hotspots in California, Florida, New York, and Washington, and it’s possible that Google may be involved.

This is all guessing of course, but it does make sense that Google would want to cut its own bandwidth bills and enter into at least hosting itself. I remember reading that one of Google’s biggest problems was power. They consume huge amounts of power using all those servers, so perhaps GoogleDam would be just as likely to guess at the future. I would think a big part of future growth would include some sort of energy plans.

I’m not sure how excited folks would be with free, ad-supported and targeted, WiFi. Maybe many wouldn’t care if it was as unobtrusive as Google’s contextual ads. I remember several ISPs who were part of the dot com bust that tried to go with an ad-supported free internet connection. It didn’t go well for them, but none of them were Google. I think I’d rather pay a few bones a month and have truly free, unencumbered WiFi.

Admittedly I don’t know the budget or exact figures, but it sure seems with all the tax money that’s being paid (our property taxes continue to esclate) that somewhere in this money ‘free’ WiFi could be provided for all US citizens. Socialized WiFI? Hmm, could be controversial considering how many people don’t even have health care coverage in America.

With public libraries seemingly facing extinction thanks to escalating cuts in funding, perhaps these locations could or someday will be turned more into internet cafes? Almost all libraries provide internet, but maybe that’s the direction these locations could move further into to survive into the future. The library is a cool place, but I have to admit that with the internet its purpose and usefulness has declined. At least it’s that way in our household.

The fangs are starting to show and in one corner it’s the Redmond 800 pound gorilla playing the lawsuit card over an employee Google hired away who allegedly has violated a non-compete clause

Microsoft said in its lawsuit, which was seen by CNET News.com. “Google is fully aware of Lee’s promises to Microsoft, but has chosen to ignore them, and has encouraged Lee to violate them.”

Scoble says he won’t comment on legal or HR issues but a post saying no comment is a comment, Robert. You should know better than that. A true “no comment” would be not even linking the story to begin with. Stay out of it entirely. Linking to it and saying you have no comment is telling the rest of us out here that you would say something if it didn’t get you in trouble.

And that just adds to the problem.

As for the source of this infection, I’ve always felt non-competes were problematic legally from a number of standpoints, though I’m certainly no attorney or legal expert (so please keep that in mind). As far as my non-legal mind goes, a company cannot really go after a person’s right to work, which is one thing I’m suspect of immediately in non-compete lawsuits. However, in this case the target is a competitor — Google — not just the employee himself which gives the case a little more chance of success in the legal arena.

But in the court of public opinion? Uh oh.

I seriously doubt this one will ever go to trial. Microsoft doesn’t need any more bad press. Even if they are right on this one, and they very well could be, the damage and liability of giving up a key employee isn’t Google’s fault, it’s their own fault. Please look in the mirror a little more, Microsoft.

For every two steps forward in humanizing the company, they take steps back in PR with moves like this one.

Maybe they should pay Scoble more too before he jumps ship and becomes the human presence for one of their competitors. It’s a good bet that they will keep losing more good employees to Google and other competitors until they make what seem like obvious changes to the rest of us Monday morning quarterbacks.

Good employees will not stay without competitive and commiserate wages and benefits, good work environment, a rewarding job with advancement potential and a decent commute. All but the last one are within the control of the employer.

Mirror, mirror …

Huge blow to P2p software developers because now they can be held liable for copyright infringement of their users, says the Supreme Court ruling in MGM Studios vs. Grokster cast 04-480:

the Court said: “We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties” — that is, computer users using free downloading software.

Being liable for the actions of users is a very slippery slope, IMO. I do not believe that this was the right decision by the courts. I can see MGM being concerned about copyright and piracy, but there has to be a better way then going after developers. Has to be.

Right now Gnomedex is just getting started and one topic which I have the suspicion won’t be getting much, if any, coverage is the new 2257 laws impacting adult webmasters as of yesterday. This is a huge issue for adult sites — especially free ones — adult content providers, adult free hosting sites and more, but it stretches beyond just those who are in the adult business, but those who do business with those who are in the adult business too.

I’m sure some reading this already are saying: so what, stick it to those sleazeballs! Or maybe we don’t care about porn on the web or those who are associated in anyway with that type of business!

I’d like to think humans don’t have such a narrow-minded view of sex like that, but it’s true that some still think sex should stay in the bedroom and any attempt to bring it out is a sin. But in the bedroom it’s not wrong for consenting adults to share legal pornography. It is not illegal to possess, act in, produce, sell or publish pornography among consenting adults. I’m sure there are many folks who would like for all of this to be illegal but it’s not.

Freedom.

Before I can go on let me give my personal disclaimer of my business affiliations. For one, I’ve done and continue to do business with several different adult companies and sites. This might not be something I advertise here at this blog or link to on a regular basis, so many readers might not realize that I do, in fact, have any such affiliation. Those that have read my bio will see that this has been made very clear there as well.

I’m not ashamed of this affiliation, BTW. I’ve met some really brilliant business people in the adult business and I’ve also met some really shady ones. I can say the same thing for the restaurant business and other businesses I’ve been involved with or am currently involved with so for me, it’s just another type of business. Only, in this case, the adult business is about something that causes moral outrage in some people.

So let’s be clear here that I do very much have a stake in the well being of the adult industry. If they are hurt financially then I will be too. If this makes me too biased on this subject for my opinion to matter then feel free to stop reading at any time.

Freedom.

If it’s possible as intelligent human beings let’s try our best not to make this a moral discussion on the issue or prejudge — or be prejudiced against, perhaps — the adult industry as most mainstream publications tend to do when discussing adult sites. The all too often popular slant is to blanket adult sites as dirty, nasty, corrupt, dishonest and downright evil. While all of those words might apply to some segments of the industry, it’s not true of the entire industry any more than prostitution being a illegal across all of America (it’s legal in some parts of Nevada).

The existing 18 U.S.C 2257 went into effect in 1990 and required that everyone who produces pornographic content must be able to prove that performers displayed in that content are at least 18 years old. This congressional activity was inspired by a hardcore video performance by a 15-year-old performer using fake ID to perform. The stage name she used? Traci Lords:

While living with a forty-something boyfriend posing as her stepfather, she used a friend’s sister’s birth certificate and a fake driver’s license indicating that she was twenty-two years of age to fake her way into the porn industry at the age of fifteen.

The congressional response was to jump into action and decide: we need a law to enforce on the adult industry to protect the children so this never happens again. Never mind the fact that to begin with the performer had already been circumventing laws to perform illegally. An admittedly extreme comparison is a minor getting a fake ID in order to drink and of course the laws impacting store owners, bartenders, etc.

I agree with the original 2257 regulations, I think it’s very important that those who shoot and produce the actual pornographic material must have very good records and take every precaution to ensure that nobody under the age of 18 is ever involved. I also agree that those who do — or don’t — take precautions, collect IDs and try to check those at the door should be the ones who are held legally responsible.

These people witnessing the actual pornographic acts should have very good documentation and be subject to routine inspection by the health department just like the legal brothels are in Nevada. It’s not only about protecting the performers from contracting AIDs or other diseases, it’s about protecting the rest of the population from the spread of diseases who have sex with these performers. Yes, use protection, of course! Personal responsibility.

Note: naturally, not all performers are carrying sexually transmitted diseases. I’m not saying or even remotely suggesting that so please don’t anybody get derailed there. That’s a common diss from uninformed outsiders who delight in criticizing the industry for stereotypes.

Who are adult models?
People who decide to be pictured taking adult content could be young adults at college with their boyfriends or girlfriends, married couples and others in committed relationships, business people, teachers, doctors, authors, lawyers, the older lady next door, your mechanic, best friend, it really is all different types of people — some of which you may or may not know personally. Scandals have erupted over politicians and sexual escapades at younger ages.

These models are mostly regular people, not sex obsessed, disease-toting freaks. Sure, some of these people who took money for having sex on camera might later in life regret their personal decision but that’s too bad. Part of growing old and becoming wise is learning from mistakes and for some it might be a mistake at 18 or 21 or even 24 or 25 to be shooting adult content for money. These people aren’t doing it for free so don’t make them victims here, they are entering into a business arrangement. Adults — yes, even those that are 18 — have the ability to enter into business arrangements. Smart things, stupid things, whatever your perspective or their actions later on in life. There is a name for ths decision that is not shared, respected and perhaps even understood in all parts of the world.

Freedom.

So fine, make the laws tougher on the people who solicit and produce the models shooting video or pictures of adult content, I can get with that. But also make the laws tougher on people who choose to shoot the content and intentionally and criminally deceive those who do this as a business. Let’s not rush to make victims out of people who don’t exhibit personal responsibility.

Aside: whatever happened to personal responsibility, anyway? Today in the United States it seems to continue to be a world of a lack of personal responsibility. Too many people don’t want to take responsibility for themselves and want to push forward laws and regulations to regulate personal freedom out of existence. Smokers? I haven’t smoked for almost 20 years now but if I did, I’d be pissed. Smokers have been pushed outside and more recently away from buildings. Smokers have become outcasts. Smokers, drinkers, porn, all terrible socidal vices in the eyes of too many hypocrites. Everybody reading this engages in sex — or wants to — and never would have been here if not for sex. Everybody reading this has had a drink and maybe taken a smoke. All these activities are personal freedoms or desires that we share either publically, privately, both or none. Freedom is choice.

This blog started on the 4th of July two years ago intentionally on that day because the biggest thing that makes me go hmm is the seemingly neverending attack on freedom and independence. To me, what makes the United States so great is the freedoms we are granted and able to live with and by. The freedoms to make money, love, start a business, lose a business, view adult content or start a business in and around adult content, demonstrate against the government or anything that we disagree with just as long as it doesn’t violate the freedoms that others share. Isn’t it a beautiful thing that we can start a blog and talk about the government and not have the blog hosting company — Blogger or Typepad or whomever — blocked out by the government as is happening in China, where democracy isn’t employed?

Freedom.

I’m proud to be an American and share these freedoms and I love this country.

And it’s odd that so close to the anniversary of our national Independence day that the very freedoms that you and I, fellow Americans who read this, possess continue to be under assault. There’s a war in Iraq happening — a real fight with real deaths and real families being disrupted — and there is a different kind of battle here in the states. It’s not as pervasive or as “important” the general populace might believe as the war where you can see blood and humans being maimed and babies being innocent victims and children, yes, those very children we want to protect from being in porn being “casualties” of war. You see, wars aren’t fought with the old, they are fought with the young. The old send the young out to die, to protect this great country. So the most outrageous hypocrisy in government is when it seeks to protect children and at the same time the government has military officers recruiting children in public schools. Recruiting them to go fight in a war. To die in the name of?

Freedom.

A band by the name of Kingdom Come which was hammered as being a blatant ripoff of Led Zeppelin wrote an obscure, lyrically potent anti-war song entitled Gotta Go which had the following lyrics:

I gotta go,
got to fight someone I don’t even know
I think you know
they can’t wage a war if nobody shows

Who wants to protect the children, really?

Now fast forward to the web, circa 2005. For last 10 years on the web the pay adult sites have relied on free site adult webmasters to promote their wares. In order to do this, the amount of pornographic content and quality that can be seen as teaser and free content has increased. Many of these sites produce free adult gallery content that can be used as plug-in content by adult webmasters.

These adult affiliate programs are the money that circulates and generates and yes, even causes spam on our blogs. Actually it seems like this blog gets more assualted by drug and casino spam than it does porn spam, but yes, some porn spam is there too. The thing about freedom is that just as there are legitimate adult webmasters who don’t spam anybody — and yes, there are legitimate adult webmasters, there is also a percentage of people in the adult business, unfortunately, who will do anything to make a buck, including breaking laws and violating the freedoms of others.

These despicable human beings will kill our browsers with popups, backdoor install software without our permission and double and triple charge for content that we didn’t intend to purchase. These are the same creatures who don’t legally acquire content — in other words, they steal it — they don’t have 2257 licenses, and they really don’t care about getting them. They behave as Traci Lords once did to sneak into the adult business. I’m all for hunting these bastards down and prosecuting them all day and night, really I am. The reality is these type of webmasters are already breaking the law.

Why aren’t we prosecuting these criminals in greater numbers already?

No, I get it, let’s not do that, let’s make a new, even more stringent law (sarcasm). That’s how laws seem to be made these days. If a less restrictive law doesn’t work, let’s make it more restrictive. Let’s tighten the screws. Increase the intensity and reduce the freedom.

The new laws which went into effect yesterday, June 23, 2005, now specifically target adult webmasters, not just adult content producers. These laws require that any website that displays content containing and displaying sexual activity (straight nudity doesn’t apply) must have the same documentation as the producer of the content. Not just have a notice, and have records that they purchased the content to be able to legally display on their adult websites, but must have the same documentation as the producer of the content, which includes copies of the IDs and documentation about the identity of these models.

A chill ripples across my spine thinking about less desirable webmasters or stalkers or just plain evil people being able to claim they are an adult webmaster, buying content from a producer and then using this as a sick hunting ground for models. Mark my words that this will happen if somebody doesn’t challenge this situation.

Now — today — on American soil there is an additional new concern that prospective models for pornographic material need to be concerned about: who exactly is going to be able to access their personal identification and information?

It’s not just the photographer or producer who have this personal identification and information on the model, it reaches out to some distant publisher on the internet who can be just about anybody — including somebody with nefarious intentions. Scammers, phishers and spammers have repeatedly proven that it doesn’t take much effort or even money to setup a website and become a webmaster on the wrong side of the law doing unethical, shady, illegal business. The internet is a breeding ground for bad people living behind bogus WHOIS information that are difficult to track down. Why does congress want to give anybody like this some models identification and personal information?

The Free Speech Coalition has negotiated a temporary reprieve (not an injunction but a deal with the DOJ) — but only for its members who pay $300 a year which they don’t even have online payment processing, they want to process the money via phone call or sent via Federal Express. This is raising the eyebrows of many adult webmasters that smell a rat. The rest of the adult webmasters who don’t pay the $300 a year can be arrested today — now — if they aren’t in compliance. But does the $300 just protect one website, or does it protect all websites?

There are already some creative solutions being developed by adult content producers. One adult producer is issuing this model documentation but the information is encrypted and upon any Department of Justice (DOJ) complaint the decryption key is sent to unlock the information and provide the actual model information to the DOJ investigators.

But what if that adult content producer is out of business when/if the DOJ complaint comes? Every lock needs a key. Keys can be duplicated and locks can be thwarted. This again exposes the adult webmaster to a tremendous amount of risk.

And this is exactly the scenario that I think the DOJ wants. They don’t want adult businesses operating in the good old US of A. This is in direct conflict with the very thing our young men and women are in Iraq fighthing to preserve.

Freedom.

Some reading this are probably angry, disappointed, disgusted or confused why I’d write something defending the adult business on any level. This country is divided between red and blue and this division has caused the country to fragment on issues of common sense. It should be common sense that part of really, truly protecting the children involves their future freedom and independence. The very things the forefathers fought for and wrote about hundreds of years ago. The very reason I am able to speak freely on these sensitive issues.

Yes, oh yes, freedom.

William Margold, a former porn actor and activist gets is onto the bigger picture that I’ve tried to articulate in this piece:

In the end, said Margold, American citizens will be the ultimate arbiters of their rights to access porn: “Until the public admits it watches this and allows itself to be counted, it deserves to have the stuff taken away.”

The government is still for the people, by the people and of the people. The taking away of your and my freedoms, fellow Americans, will not stop until we stand up and say: no. It might start with sexually oriented material and maybe for some that’s just ok because it’s morally offensive and it’s in the bedroom. But what will be next? What will be deemed pornographic in the future?

This new 2257 doesn’t involve straight nudity, but what will the next version bring? When will the one fundamental right you can’t see — but certainly can feel in those red, white and blue stars and stripes — be excised like some cancerous growth?

Freedom.

This morning I intended, as usual, to write and report on the various tech news that I found important and interesting but instead kept returning to a topic that is burning brightly in one very important segment of the internet. This topic was so strong that it dominated an entire post and became the longest blog post I’ve ever written. Because I haven’t actually published it, I can’t link to it yet, but it will be coming.

Writing is funny that way sometimes. Even though you can plan to write about one thing, another can write itself into precedence. It’s that type of spontaniety that fascinates me with the writing profession. And for those journalistic snobs who think us bloggers are just wannabe writing hackers out here, too bad for you that some of us actually do aspire to be more than literary mosquitoes to your trade.

It’s even more exciting in fiction where a story takes on a life of its own. Characters can speak and protest and want to go down a different path than where they were intended to travel. I’ve always felt this was like a type of creative chaos and it’s the writer’s responsibility to weave all this together into something that makes sense and is entertaining, useful, relevant and from a business standpoint: salable. Some great work has been written that isn’t salable.

I digress.

Yesterday something significant happened. A new set of regulations went into effect which impact the legal requirements for publishing of certain types of adult material online. In the meantime, so you can get up to speed, go do some Googling on US 18 2257 regulations and you’ll be better informed on the situation.

It is a political and business topic and I typically don’t do much political discussion at this blog. However, when politics meet business, especially business that hits close to home, it resonates with me and I need to work out my thoughts and try and refine my beliefs of how our government here in the US of A should work.

I’m sure many folks leave the political blogs to come to technology blogs and escape the politics but there are times when there is crossover between the two that simply cannot be overlooked without commentary.

Later, I will share. Maybe not today, but soon, I promise. Stay tuned.

Update 6/26/05: It’s been published here.