Pierson's Final Project - Chris DiBona from Google

For my final project, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris DiBona, Google's Open Source Program Manager. In the first podcast we talk about Linux and the Open Source movement. In the second podcast we talk about digital rights management and some fun obscure tech tools.

You can subscribe to the feed here: Pwned Feed. These two podcasts are both enhanced podcasts (images along with links are embedded into the podcast file) so listen to it with a player that can render enhanced podcasts.

Thanks again Chris!

Teque5's Final: AACS Decryption

My final and its associated summary can be viewed here, on my site.
It is a tale of deception, heartbreak, and ultimate achievement.
It's a flash movie, so no reading is required. Enjoy.

archiPWNED - A Final Project About Architecture

My final project is a library sited at the edge of downtown Los Angeles, and is an exploration of how the ideas we have been discussing in class could be expressed as architectural concepts. An excerpt from the project summary:

This project is at its heart a reaction to three essential questions about both the site and the inherent nature of the typology. First, what is the role of a library in the digital age? or, more specifically, how does a library stay relevant when its main inventory - the printed word - is marching towards obsolescence? Second, how can the public space requirement - the plaza - exert a strong presence on both sides of the site? As a primary means of urban connection across a site, it is crucial that the plaza engage and conduct people. Third, how can this project support and contribute to the development of the retail in the pedestrian alleyway? As the initial step in revitalization of the area, it is crucial that this new library development follow in those footsteps.

Link to PDF of the portfolio entry for the project with pictures, sketches, diagrams, and renderings. I think it provides a nice look at the process an architecture student goes through for a project, from start to finish.

Final Project Interview #2: Ernesto of TorrentFreak.com

Here is the second interview that I conducted for my final project.

Created in November of 2005, TorrentFreak.com is a weblog that covers stories relating to all things BitTorrent: including protocol technologies, torrent search engines, and anything related to free culture. Ernesto, a resident of the Netherlands, is the sites founder.

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Allen: Your site blogs dozens of stories on a weekly basis. In your opinion, what was the most interesting or important story Torrentfreak has covered in the past 12 months?

Ernesto: The coverage on the Pirate Bay raid and its aftermath was very interesting and fun to do. This event had a huge impact on Swedish politics lead[ing] to the rise of pirate parties all around the world.

The BitTorrent protocol encryption that was implemented in BitTorrent clients last year resulted in another interesting series of post[s]. The developers of uTorrent and Azureus added support for encrypted transfers to their clients to bypass ISPs that started to throttle BitTorrent traffic to save bandwidth, that's where the cat-and-mouse game started. We had a discussion on TorrentFreak whether traffic shaping is good or bad, and both BitTorrent users and ISPs had some good arguments.

Apparently BitTorrent encryption is pretty effective. Last month the Canadian ISP Rogers decided to limit all encrypted transfers which affects a wide range of customers, not only the ones using BitTorrent. Sad but true.

Allen: People tend to have some polarized opinions regarding the morality (and legality) of p2p networks here in the U.S. How do people in the Netherlands feel about intellectual property rights and the idea of downloading?

Ernesto: Let me start off by making clear that filesharing and copyright infringement are not the same thing.

For example, the Dutch government is subsidizing a project that will use BitTorrent to distribute TV-shows from the Dutch public broadcasting channels, and the BBC already uses a similar service based on the BitTorrent protocol. This is a great example of how (legal) P2P services may contribute to the viewing pleasure of the public, while it saves broadcasting channels bandwidth (money).

In general I think the attitudes towards copyright infringement are less polarized in The Netherlands, mainly because the anti-piracy lobby is not as big (rich) as in the U.S. Most people will probably agree that the artists / producers need to make some money in the end. Unfortunately policy makers don't always recognize that the Internet and "digitalization" in general demand an update of the intellectual property rights. It should be more easy for individuals or small business to acquire licenses to download / distribute content online for example. People should be able to play a song from the latest Arctic Monkeys album on their netcast if they want to, this is pretty much impossible to do at the moment.

I don't think that piracy is a problem, it's more like a signal. The music and movie industry has product that their consumers want. High quality, and DRM free, just like all those pirated copies.
On a sidenote, downloading copyrighted movies and movies is legal here. However, sharing (uploading) copyrighted content isn't, and this is something you can't escape if you're using BitTorrent.

Allen: This seems like an extremely pertinent question for someone like you: what trends have you noticed in BitTorrents since you created TorrentFreak? Do you have any predictions for the future of torrents or p2p in general?

Ernesto: BitTorrent became extremely popular over the past two years. Five BitTorrent sites are currently listed in the Alexa top 500 of the most visited websites on the Internet, and a dozen other sites in the top 2000.

BitTorrent is becoming mainstream now. Hardware manufacturers ... create devices that directly download .torrent files, Apple has plans to distribute updates and software via BitTorrent, BitTorrent Inc opened its media store and TV and Movie producers are interested in the technology to distribute their products.

BitTorrent or variations of applications and services that use similar P2P technologies will probably continue to grow in the future. The technology itself will become less visible, and it will be implemented and all kinds of user friendly services and application. So, most people will use P2P services in the future without even noticing. Piracy on the other hand will become less and less popular as soon as high quality legal alternatives become available. Personally I think that piracy is at its greatest height right now, that is, if the music and movie industry are willing to change.

Allen: How do you go about collecting the data for the weekly "Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent" posts?

Ernesto: I collect data on all the popular movie torrents that are tagged as a DVDrips on several BitTorrent trackers. The titles with the most seeds and peers (all the people that download and / or upload that title) end up in the list. The list is very sensitive for new releases because these tend to be very popular the first days after they are uploaded.

The method we use is not perfect, but I'm pretty sure we are more accurate than services like BigChampagne and Infofilter who claim that they provide accurate charts.

Allen: My friends and I have followed the entire Sealand story with thePiratebay pretty closely. What do you think of that entire saga?

Ernesto: The Pirate Bay knows how to cause a media stir. People who believed that they were actually going to start a new nation are a little naive to say the least. The Pirate Bay is a publicity machine, and (besides being the biggest BitTorrent tracker) they do very well at making the news. I've talked to Brokep, one of the admins of the Pirate Bay and he told me that they have their eye on an Island that they will try to buy in the near future. They are certainly not keeping the money for themselves. It just takes a while to find a cheap island. Sealand was just too expensive

Allen: Your site has a pretty clear stance with regard to DRM. What would you say to someone in the film or music industry who thinks they can protect their content with a DRM wrapper?

Ernesto: It only takes 1 person to crack the DRM and put a DRM-less copy online, that makes it pretty useless. I really can't see the benefits of DRM, it's only hurting the honest consumers. I buy all my music online (unlike most people might expect) but the first thing I do when I've bought a track or album is remove the DRM. Not because I'm sharing it on P2P-networks, but because I want to listen to the music whenever and wherever I want.

Allen: Which torrent search engines do you regard as the best? Why are they the best? Do you have any personal favorites?

Ernesto: I like torrentz.com and mininova.org, both sites are clean and reliable.

Allen: What would you like to see done (steps, events, etc.) towards the promotion of free culture around the globe?

Ernesto: First we need to get rid of DRM ;). Secondly, copyright laws need to be adapted the digital age, and a flexible licensing model that suits the Internet needs to be developed. The less restrictions the better.

Bloggers and the MLB

Before this semester, I had never taken an interest in online communities or blogging. After participating and contributing to the blog that we kept up in class, I decided to check out other blogs in my field of interest: sports, particularly baseball. So after doing some online research, I found quite a few blogs that I found to be credible and substantial about the Los Angeles Dodgers.

During this same semester, I took a sports public relations class where we learned about the process of credentialing members of the media. Through this class and other research I learned that the National Hockey League is the first sports league to allow bloggers game credentials. I then questioned whether or not bloggers receive credentials to baseball games. After research, and speaking with public relations directors for 2 particular baseball teams, I decided to create a presentation that would give detail on the online blogging community and how sports teams such as hockey teams are benefiting from bloggers. I also compared the success that the DNC and RNC had with allowing bloggers to sit at the media tables during the conventions, to the benefits of allowing bloggers to gain credentials for baseball games.

The presentation I put together explains the role bloggers play in sports right now, and how the MLB could benefit from allowing bloggers to acquire game credentials.

The teachingcopyright.org Launch Manifesto

In America, laws describe how freedom should work--but for the most part, we understand that freedom in America is really an idea with flexible definitions and many, many ways of being expressed. Similarly, we use copyright laws to describe how creativity should work in our society.

The California State Legislature passed a law requiring the teaching of copyright in schools applying for technology grants, and I raised an eyebrow... Maybe even two eyebrows. When we teach the idea of freedom through the study of documented laws, like studying the Bill of Rights, we're at our best when we teach that freedom works in diverse ways for different groups of people. So the same should go for copyright--if we're going to be teaching the idea of creativity through the study of laws like copyright, then we'd do well to take the same route--teach that creativity works in a lot of different ways for different people.

But I'm worried that that's not going to happen, and I'm not the only one. I worry that a generation of smart California kids, all attending schools ambitious enough to embrace technology, are somehow going to fall short of learning about creativity--that creativity's primary motive is profit, or that profit from creativity can come only through ownership. Those views may have been true in the past, they probably have some relevance today, but there are other ways of thinking about creativity, how it works, and how humanity benefits from it.

Although requiring copyright education is currently just a California law--there will be more and more reasons to teach about copyright in schools. Creativity through technology is a powerful theme for the beginning of this new century--the proliferation of tools used to create and manipulate words, pictures, and video has played a crucial role in democratizing creativity.

So I'm launching teachingcopyright.org as a tool to help teachers and administrators learn, talk, and teach copyright. Laws are a noble attempt to give strong ideas a living presence in our daily lives--but we fail to educate when we just describe laws and not the strong ideas that inspired them.

Educator, academic, or otherwise--please visit the site, comment on the blog, and help to build a strong body of knowledge for teachers to build upon. Creativity drives our human universe of industry, entertainment, and achievement--so let's get this copyright thing right.

vosotros: music for you-all

For the last several months, I have been working closely with Gabe Noel to develop our contribution to the tumultuous world of online music. Initially we set out to start our own record label, however, the more we examined the reality of digital music and the changing face of the industry, it was clear that we needed to take a different approach.

I met Gabe in 7th grade Spanish class in Chicago, where by comes the origin of our name. Vosotros is a Spanish verb conjugation roughly meaning “you-all.” But since it is only used in Spain, the vosotros form was always ignored, which quickly became an ongoing joke between us.

The dynamic of our relationship is as follows: as a multi-instrumentalist and composer, Gabe has an endless supply of musical ideas - it is my job to help synthesize these ideas and make them accessible to you-all. Early on in the project, we had discussed releasing a compilation of Gabe performing across a variety of genres. This idea eventually led us to our current focus: a live monthly showcase (vosotros presents: live@land) and a complimentary podcast (vosotros presents: the lazy susan).

Each month, Gabe forms a new band among friends. They record a song together for the podcast and then perform for the first time at that month’s show in Little Tokyo. Each of these songs are released with a non-commerical, attribution, share-alike Creative Commons license and are available for free download from our website and via iTunes. Additionally, every band that performs at LAND releases a song through the Lazy Susan as accoutrement. Our hard work on this aspect of the project has been rewarding and has served to build a small community of vosotros supporters.

Although we will continue to support the podcast and live@land concert series, we are preparing our first full-length release as a label: Quiet Orchestra. Quiet Orchestra is a 12+ piece electric ensemble. The group came together for the first time in early March, recording a full album over the course of two days. The project will be released digitally later this summer and will include both music and film. As we discussed heavily in class, the biggest challenge will be trying to balance the promotional benefits that Creative Commons provides with the reality that the project is also available for sale. Cory has shown it can work for books - and I intend to make it work for music.