On the other side is just the quiet kitchen. The horrible afront of a safe place to eat and act and live. The fierce treachery of inequality.

Looking back to the Million Penguins project, which wrapped up in March of last year, puts Costory in some more perspective. Million Penguins was a joint effort between Penguin Books and the Online MA in Creative Writing and New Media at De Montfort University in Leicester – the students were the Moderators, hmm… The novel was authored by some 1500 collaborators while the process was blogged by Penguins. The process blog is some of the most interesting stuff, to my mind, as you watch these book industry dudes sway from pretentious lit.crit. to Doubting Thomas, to flumoxed, laughing, bewildered, apologetic, honest, happy, over it.

All to the good, but Problem #1: why put an end to the process? Locking down a version for release and sale – hell yes, I’d expect that, though they haven’t announced any kind of publication yet, far as I know. But then I’d have thought they’d re-open a Beta version with a new call for editors and adapters and, why not, keep it evolving. Often community development doesn’t move fast and decisive like inside a strict hierarchy. It takes more mess and longer to get to the goal, but the whole point is that it’s iterative, evolving in response to found bugs, new readers, new contexts over time, gradually becoming stable and flexible enough to hold up the Internet (eg; Apache). So while the Penguin project was much lauded (and lambasted), hyped and misunderstood, it seems to me that 1 year’s worth of work means it was only at best well begun, and then worried by authorial anxiety before being safely sealed up. Sad, sort of.

Plus, Problem # 2: there’s the whole license issue, making it well, not open source at all:

By posting your submission on the Wiki Novel and the Site, you grant us a non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, distribute and display any content you submit to us in any format now known or later developed. If you do not want to grant us these rights, please do not submit your content to us.

As Lise Treutler pointed out a while back on Indyish, Margaret Atwood joined in on the Million Penguins project but called it “Writing without responsibility” – Thing is, this is not a feature of open source, but of the way Penguin organized their experiment. No one is attributed for their work, and Penguin keeps all the content. Kind of the opposite of true open source where names, acknowledgment and reputation are super important BECAUSE public ownership and visibility redefines the context.

Costory is less shiny, branded and publicist-y than Million Penguins, and it’s closer to the core of what the open source license theorists and activists have been thumping about for decades but it’s still limited a bit, in terms of it’s ability to activate exponential effects, by the license chosen. Unlike the Penguin project, everything on the site is licensed NonCommercial Attribution Share Alike.

In neither case is the fiction fantastic, but call me crazy, I have a lot of hope for the next evolution of this experiment with collective authorship. I think when it’s done right this process can provide inspiration and empowerment to distributed artists. A Costroy with an inspiring foundation, a dedicated leader, and licensed so that everyone who participates can sell copies (crazy sounding? but that’s how Linux works, and those are the original Million Penguins =) could become a perpetually refilling and refining resource of art and income. So Indyish is keeping an eye out and fingers crossed, even if it takes another decade.

Here is an email from Asma Jahangir, head of the Pakistani Human Rights Commission and the UN’s Special Rapporteur for freedom of religion worldwide. Now under house arrest in Lahore, she’s one of many Pakistanis urgently asking the world community to raise our voice:

There is a strong crackdown on the press and lawyers… The Chief Justice is under house arrest (unofficially). The President of the Supreme Court Bar (Aitzaz Ahsan) and 2 former presidents, Mr. Muneer Malik and Tariq Mahmood have been imprisoned for one month under the Preventive Detention laws…

There are other scores political leaders who have also been arrested. Yesterday I was house arrested for 90 days… the President (who has lost his marbles) said that he had to clamp down on the press and the judiciary to curb terrorism. Those he has arrested are progressive, secular minded people, while the terrorists are offered negotiations and ceasefires.

Lawyers and civil society will challenge the government and the scene is likely to get uglier. We want friends of Pakistan to urge the US administration to stop all support of the instable dictator, as his lust for power is bringing the country close to a worse form of civil strife…

–Asma Jahangir
Lahore, Pakistan

(still from Avaaz:)

General Musharraf claims that martial law is necessary to combat extremist terror. But it just doesn’t add up. Musharraf retains strong links with the Pakistani Taliban (see PS below). His emergency powers are being directed only against the democratic opposition, free press and judiciary – just days before a scheduled ruling on whether Musharraf could run for president while remaining army chief. In an August poll, too, Pakistanis rated “ensuring an independent judiciary, free press and free elections” as their top priority.

Right now, leaders around the world are deciding how to respond. The General is dressing up his crackdown in the rhetoric of “anti-terrorism” because Musharraf and his military supporters depend on foreign military aid and international recognition to maintain their legitimacy. That’s why we have to speak out now.

The world can’t ignore the threat of chaos in Pakistan, or the voices of our fellow democrats there. Let’s come together as we did on Burma, and move our governments to act. In these crucial early days, the voice of the world’s people has tremendous power. Let’s use it. Sign the petition and tell your friends today -

http://www.avaaz.org/en/emergency_pakistan

With hope,

Paul, Pascal, Galit, Ricken, Graziela, Ben and the whole Avaaz team

PS for more background on Pakistani polls and Musharraf’s links to the Pakistani Taliban, see: http://www.avaaz.org/blog/en/pakistan

Burma’s streets are quiet–no mass demonstrations, no riot police. But the calm is an illusion. Change is coming to Burma, and we are all a part of it.

Here’s where we stand: The regime has massacred, tortured, and intimidated its critics at home, and continues its night arrests and brutal interrogations. But while it has momentarily silenced the domestic opposition, its attacks on the revered Buddhist monks ignited an anger amongst the Burmese people that cannot be extinguished. Contacts inside Burma tell us that the demonstrators are steadily regrouping, even in the face of the deadly crackdown.

And around the world, the roar has grown deafening–so powerful that governments are scrambling for ways to bring new pressure to bear on the junta. Government leaders and the media have publicly credited the outcry of global civil society. Look at the statistics in the box on the right to see how, working alongside allies around the world, Avaaz members have begun to make a difference.

Many Burmese members of Avaaz have written in. Here’s a note from one of them–Trisa, now living abroad:

I am one of the 8888 uprising generation. Since the September uprising in Burma, I can’t get good night sleep. I can’t contact my remaining families and friends if they are ok… The voice of the world is very powerful. I have heartfelt thank you for all the supporters. Your voice can change our lives!

And here’s a note from an Avaaz member, Lynn in London, who joined a group of Burmese monks to hand-deliver the Avaaz petition–contained in a big red box–to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, on the steps of 10 Downing Street last week:

When I put my hand on the red box, which held the 753,000 signatures from around the world collected by Avaaz, I imagined the outrage of the many people from every country in the world, every culture, every race, and every religion, contained within this box which was about to be presented to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. I thought about what it might mean for these Burmese monks whose religious brothers far away had been hurt and mistreated by the crackdown, to know that in every country in the world, people were supporting them.

And here’s what May Ng, a Burmese writer, editorialized on the news site Mizzima after seeing our petition:

As their voices have been heard and their faces have been seen, Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma will no longer be alone. Avaaz.org, whose mission is to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people shape global decisions, will make sure that Burmese people will have a voice over their own fate from now on.

Avaaz will share the struggle of the Burmese people until the struggle is won. Our goals are constant: transition, dialogue, reconciliation, and democracy. We will also continue to take action together on many urgent issues, from climate change to peace in the Middle East to human rights–but we will not turn from the cause of the Burmese people. We believe that every human life has equal value, whether in Berlin, Beijing or Rangoon.

As Aung San Suu Kyi once urged, we will use our freedom to promote theirs.

With hope,

Ben, Ricken, Paul, Galit, Graziela, Iain, Sarah, Pascal, and Milena–the Avaaz team

PS: 52 years ago today, the UN charter enshrined “the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” Twelve years ago today, Aung San Suu Kyi was imprisoned. And today, in key cities around the world, protesters held a new wave of protests; the first shipment of supplies, paid for by Avaaz members, left for Burma–and the junta agreed to re-admit Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. envoy who is working to build a dialogue between the regime and the opposition, earlier than previously announced. It’s been a long struggle, but the most important ones always are.

PPS: If your friends haven’t yet signed the petition, urge them to sign at: http://avaaz.org/en/burma_hope_lives/6.php

PPPS: Some further reading:

Voices from within Burma:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7058610.stm
and
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/east-asia/myanmar-burma/
and
http://www.mizzima.com/MizzimaNews/Interview/01-Oct-2007.html

Avaaz’s Paul Hilder “People Power can win”:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/paul_hilder/2007/10/people_power_can_win.html

If Pandora and other smart internet radio providers had their potential unleashed instead of squashed the global music industry could experience a boom as customers FINALLY begin to access the immeasurably vast wells of talent that are really out there. On the other hand, if the legitimate businesses trying to support artists are pushed out of existence by disturbingly undemocratic legislation, then the internet will face a longer term and more serious problem, another swelling in the ranks of those ancient irritable masses of the dispossessed. Bad news bears when those guys get pissed off, remember? … Can’t we do something fair and sustainable instead?

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora,

I’m writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays and broadcast radio doesn’t pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio:

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends – the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I’m no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster’s business potential.

I hope you’ll take just a few minutes to sign our petition – it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.

I added some of the links and boldy action, but aside from that, this is the plea for help exactly as Tim sent it, please sign it if you see fit…

I run faster but she is with me again. why don’t you just call me, it will be ok. My pace quickens as it is the only way to win.

I can see her standing in the street on that night. He had just asked us for 35 cents and he wished us a happy thanksgiving when I told him with a cool urban sorry we didn’t. She was wearing my fleece, the one from my former fling. She leaned against the car and didn’t seem to understand what I was telling her. Her thin body in that big fleece made her look even smaller. She told me that things were divisible and I knew was otherwise. I knew disengagement is nearly impossible when people break into each other’s private spheres. I knew I was leaving in moments. She tried to give me a weak buck yeah to persuade me it could be ok, but she had violated our unwritten contract. What’s past is past. I told her I loved her, leaned in, and kissed her. My keys out of my pocket, I opened the door and started the car as she stood in front of it. Then she walked towards the sidewalk so I pulled out of my parking spot and onto Mission.

it would be better if you called me

I took Mission to van ness and the 101 North. Only the poor and crazy were out.

It began to rain, and in the rain I could see the woman in the wheelchair rolling across the 101. No traffic in any direction. She stopped in the southbound lane, right in the middle of it and looked up the hill, cigarette in hand. She blew smoke up and away from her little body and looked up the hill. At the empty street. Nothing but me in my car, and her sitting in the street. I wondered if that woman does that every day at 3:30 in the morning, and if I invaded her privacy by being with her under that cold fog? As I drove on the rain began to fall, but by then my eyes were dry so I turned on the wipers. I turned onto the golden gate, the big red towers hidden in the rain and the fog and Sinatra told me about the joys of walking the tightrope of love.

If you call me we can work this out

No, I tell her, I can’t call you now, I’m safe in these vines.

The spongy grass under my feet leads me to the edge of the Napa river, still a stream this early in the wet season. Two days of rain are not enough to make her roar. But she begins to roar in my ears.

it can’t be this way

It can and it has to be, I tell her.

When you fuck your best friend, you’re fucked.

She starts to win me over and I can smell some grapes rotting in my little path through the vines and I can see here standing in the street.

It would be better if you called

The first tear comes down my cheek and flies away because I’m running so fast. I know she is winning. The vines are disappearing now in the dark, I know that these tears are because I want her.

I turn back onto a gravel path and my vision is now blurred but I can still see her in the street.

Please go away I ask her…

Please leave me, I beg. But she won’t, because I left her and when you leave someone on those terms, those unforgiving terms, they are forever with you.

May 4-5, 2007
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec

Cities are awash in ‘public lettering’: street signs, newspaper mastheads, road signs, high-rise corporate logos, store/shop/restaurant signs, engravings on buildings and monuments, etc. They are at once branding and promotional devices; names (of buildings); labels; locating devices; material and technological artifacts; pieces of graphic, typographic, and industrial design; architectural heritage; industrial detritus; personal and cultural narratives. They are also intricately linked to the dominant preoccupations of the city: high-rise logos, for example, eloquently describe the commercial, financial, civic, even religious priorities of a particular urban locale – especially at night.

It is all the more surprising, given their sheer ubiquity, that signs have received relatively little coordinated attention – critical, creative, or otherwise. The Logo Cities symposium (www.logocities.org) aims to draw together scholars, designers, artists, and artisans to foster an informed, critical dialogue about signage, branding, and lettering in public space. We invite expressions of interest and proposals for scholarly papers, panels, artworks and screenings that critically and creatively interrogate the intersections of signage, branding and lettering in public space – in any local, regional, national, or international contexts. We are especially interested in historical case studies; design and typographic studies; activist, artistic, and new media interventions; and, critical cultural analyses that offer new and adventurous insights into these phenomena from anywhere in the world. (NB We are less interested in advertising billboards and graffiti, given the substantial attention they have already received.)

Logo Cities will be held on the downtown campus of Concordia University, Montréal, May 4/5 2007. The event will include an art exhibition of creative works focusing on signage and lettering, alongside examples of old and new signs from around the city. The symposium will close with the Québec premiere of Helvetica (www.helveticafilm.com), a new documentary film exploring the history and significance of this archetypal Modernist typeface which, for half a century, has been a ubiquitous presence in print and on signage in city streets, train stations and airports across the world. This screening of Helvetica will be introduced by the film’s director, Gary Hustwit.

Informal enquiries and formal proposals to: Matt Soar. Email: . Tel: (514) 848-2424 x2542.

Mailing address:
Dr. Matt Soar
Department of Communication Studies
Concordia University (CJ 4.329)
7141 Sherbrooke St. West
Montréal, Québec
H4B 1R6

The deadline for formal proposals is February 28, 2007. For more information and continual updates please visit www.logocities.org. The website also features work derived from Logo Cities: Montréal, a research/creation project focusing on signage, branding and lettering in the city of Montréal.

The employees of a local Plastics Company are being treated like slaves, and some of them believe that this is how Canada is, or at least Quebec; and that they never should have expected more. This breaks my heart. I have to believe this company is a cruel and illegal exception to be stopped, not the rule.

But I’m not a lawyer, I know nothing about how to deal with a union that seems only interested in getting my friend to shut up and quit bothering them with paper work; or a company with a pack of lawyers that seem willing to try any form of manipulation to keep their workers intimidated. I am not equipped for this- but I know there must be someone out there who is.

My friend has been fighting the company for over two years, since ripping his shoulder muscle using a machine he was told to work on by a manager.

There have been shocking lapses in justice- including important evidence not being presented in court, company doctors lying about the damage to his shoulder, and people being fired for trying to stand up to the company. Threatened with loss of employment, workers have gone back to dangerous jobs with unhealed injuries, including broken bones, too scared to even file an accident report. The company takes advantage of that fact that most employees only speak English as a second language and no French to make them stay in a damaging situation. I have met many of these people, and I think that if a real lawyer or law firm was able to convince them he or she was going to stick with them and work to make this stop, that many of them would come forward.

Currently my friend is being told he has no right to disability or insurance, that his time has run out, that he must return to his job at the place where he was injured and that even if he does so he may lose his seniority and pension. He is a completely upstanding citizen, but is functionally illiterate so people seem extra inclined to dismiss him and push him around.

The legal aide who took my friend’s case was a young guy, and he quit broken hearted about 6 months ago, claiming he had never had to fight such a wicked company. Now everyone seems to be trying to get my friend to just be thankful for a job and to go back to work in the place where he suffered psychological and physical trauma, including having the life of his children threatened.

My friend has spent the past years living off the charity of friends and the religious institutions where he volunteers. He says he has nothing left to lose and so he wants to fight this till the end so they will know they cannot treat people this way. Now he is ready to sue, but until now he has been trying to do everything the right way, trying to follow exactly what he’s told, and to be respectful. He worked for this company loyally for almost 20 years before getting hurt and in that time was praised for his abilities and given responsibility for training other workers.

Please if anyone out there can help him understand what is happening and help put things right- he is open to all suggestions!! These injured and mistreated workers need to be able to find a passionate and dedicated laywer or law firm to take their case pro bono and fight this company. They just need someone to stand up for them.

If you can take a minute to think of anyone you might be able to forward this to, anyone who might be able to help take on this company or who might know someone who knows someone- please do it.

If you think you can help- contact me at risa@ openjournalmontreal.com and I’ll put you in touch.

Thank you very much for your time.
R

So Mp3.net wanted El, and when they emailed him, he replied with a CC to me, bc that’s how we play. By which I mean, we work together on pretty much all projects, and we’ve formulated that relationship as a consulting partnership under the banner of Touchbasic.com. I guess they were kind of stoked to find a tech savy (ish) writer girl who might be interested in helping out. Since then we’ve had some really interesting back and forth with their founders, talking about how and whether we can get involved in the volunteer effort that is building their social network/music marketplace site behind the scenes of Mp3.net.

It’s been a tricky thing, trying to get a feel for a group of people who are doing something so similar, in some ways, to what we’re doing with Indyish. There were things right away that had my eyebrows raised- for example- in some of their copy they claimed they’d be the world biggest open source project, but when I asked about it (as you’ll see below) I was told that by “the strictest of definitions” the project is not actually open source which made me squirmy, I did my thesis on open source software after all; I’m kind of into it. But I do understand that when you’re building a website with the free labour of worldwide and independently motivated contributors there are bound to be a variety of feelings about whether the code written can be given away. And it’s bound to take a while to come to agreement on questions this big.

I’ll talk more about that over the next little while. First, some context- here’s the first set of questions I sent them, and their answers:

1. how does one become a producer vs an artist?

Mp3.Net is made up of three types of Individuals, Members, Artists and Producers. Actually one can be both or all 3. In our model a producer is an individual and is no different from the member except that they have chosen to contribute in some way to make MP3.Net better. An artist is a separate entity within the system that can publish and sell music through the network. One must be a member to be an artist but an artist can also be a Producer. A producer however is a member with extended privileges, abilities and responsibilities within the social network. The more responsibility the producer has the higher the ranking and privileges. 3 Types of producers Producer defined above, Exec Producer and Founding Producer. To put a future statistical face on what we believe we will have as numbers go. Would be 1 million Producers, 10,000 Exec Producers, 1000 Founding Producers.

2. If music is sold, what is the rights policy? does mp3.net affect artists rights in any way?

All music sold will be under end user agreements with no extended rights for resale but we have chosen not to implement any DRM (digital rights management) at this time. MySpace and many other current players in this arena have decided not to implement any DRM at this time so we are going to govern ourselves accordingly.

Can they sell the same tracks elsewhere? Absolutely! We take the view that MP3.Net is one route to market and although we can only hope to become the route of choice we believe that an independent artist should use any means at their disposal to market their work. We feel the restrictive agreements used by the industry and some other sites do not serve either the artists or their audience.

Will you actively defend artist’s rights if their intellectual property gets stolen because they’re on your site?

Like a bear protects her Cubs. We have already recruited a couple lawyers to help with this but we intend to defend our artists and more importantly help them to defend themselves.

3. Do you pick artists to promote above others? do you have any interest in ‘quality control’?

Publishing artists, those who have posted music and made it available for sale or listening will always have priority over non publishing artists of course but that is only natural. Quality control however will be done through ratings. Members will rate music as will the Artists, giving us a two tier rating system allowing us to truly know who the network loves or thinks is great music. Keep in mind No Shareholders caring about profit allows to truly see who the people choose to be the best. We have however also discussed having a bottom 100 as well as a top 100. The fact of the matter is one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.

Quality is a hard distinction in art. One of the founding concepts in MP3.Net is that there is a market for everything… no matter how small a market. We are sure that if there is someone out there producing “atonal bluegrass electronica” there is also someone out there willing to listen to it.

4. How can you help indyish.com? or touchbasic.com? I’m into being involved, as el says, in mutually beneficial ways, so I’m interested in hearing the benefit to indyish if I spend time on mp3.net.

Great Question and probably the hardest to put words too, this is one hoping you will be able to communicate to the world better then I am or have to date. The attached doc touches base on this. The important thing to grasp in this answer is that Mp3.Net is made up of Individuals and not corporations. These Individuals called Producers get to showcase who they are and what they do professionally at their Producer Profile, which is housed at Production.Mp3.Net – 1/3 of what makes mp3.net what it is and the Freelance site where Members Hire Mp3.Net Producers.

One of the things we set out to do is to create a virtual market place for all the talent needed by artists to produce and market their music. Programmers, designers, writers, administration, models, videographers, sound engineers and many more are all necessary parts of the community.

5. You say that 400 people are participating for the exposure- how are they getting exposure?

400 Producers, 60 Executive Producers, and a Dozen Founding Producers, all will be exposed as entities that have come together to truly build a Peoples Company. But it doesn’t mean producers only get clients and exposure they also get to benefit from the most fair and transparent Affiliate package that we call VC – Vouched Commissions that generate you 10% of any money ever spent on Mp3.Net by any member you refer.

How can a new person help?

You can help by just doing what you do best, and improving things that could be better. Regarding Elrun we can use his talent coding and working with our teams move this project along. As well I see him helping in recruitment of good and down to earth talent. In your case it could be in many areas. Your writing and communications background could be invaluable.

6. How many developers are currently working on it, and what’s the hierarchy like? and how open is it to change/critique- if there’s stuff I don’t think is good, will I get flame mail from 400 angry producers?

The developers are currently divided into 4 groups with a number of additional programmers around. Oversight is done in a loose hierarchy according to responsibility. Jeff sets out most of the project parameters and general structures. Panos sets out technical parameters and leads development. Paulo oversees all ecommerce related functions. Shabee oversees the team in India which covers many different functions

Flamed? NEVER! There is the highest of respect between all Producers and even higher as the rankings go up. So with you and Elrun coming on board as Exec Producers you wouldn’t have to worry about any of that negativity that exists in other communities. This is a best idea wins environment

7. What system(s) do you use to communicate between ‘teams’?

Actually we are a little old school here. Mainly we use a message board, email and chats. We looked at project boards but we found that they were too rigid for our purposes.

8 .How is it open source? is the code on sourceforge or something like that where other potential contributors can access and use it for their own projects?

By the strictest definitions it’s not open source. We are using mostly open source software where we can, except in the area of ecommerce, but a lot of it is custom development. We have no plans to make the code available in part or otherwise available to the public at large. Amongst MP3.Net Producers it would depend on the project and the level of contribution by the producer in question. Such applications would be reviewed on a case by case basis by the council.

9. Can anyone work directly on improving the site? How do developers get committer status?

Working directly on a project of this scope is an intricate thing. For now our core people oversee the integration of code. This is done for a multitude of reasons ranging from quality control to security.

10. What are the technical benefits that will attract artists?

The benefits to the artist is that we are building an entity that will allow them a better internet presence and hopefully access to a better market for both CDs and digital music. Plans are also to provide them with the tools needed to interact with their fans and allow them to manage their online presence easily, book venues, and market themselves and their events effectively. The key is the social network structure that underpins the project. It allows for an individual to express many aspects of who they are and what they do, and grow as the site grows. The framework allows for a single point of reference to the activities of an individual which allows them market all that they do.

11. How much funding do you have for development, and where is it coming from?

And here it is, the most magical part of mp3.net since 2004 the web site has been self maintained with no investment needed with our launch date around the corner we are expecting tons of advertising revenues that will make funding unnecessary. Mp3.Net has been built 100% by contribution making us the best story online. If anyone was to Invest it would make them a share holder of some type crashing our concept that we are truly No ones company but our Members.

Following this, I had more questions, and we traded more emails.. here’s some more key highlights:

I admire the size of the idea. I dislike your claim that you’ll be the world’s largest open source project when what you are doing is not in fact open source. If you are going by some alternative interpretation of os then I think that needs to be defined up front really explicitly, otherwise you look either like you’re lying or like you don’t know what you’re talking about.
(that’s me being a bit prickly about some of the bold open source claims in the copy they sent me)

MP3.net : I fully agree with you, its just that you need to take in concideration the organic evolution Mp3.net has taken 3 years. We only now are starting to grow at a pace that is attracting great talent and things are moving faster then we can catch up. This is one of the last debated issues regarding our experiment. I am a big fan of making everything other then our Ecommerce/wallet/accounting software Open Source. Others disagree time will tell. Hoping you come on board and help me out on making Proper Open Source. I am only the guy who is supposedly good with people with the rolodex of some of the most influential people in entertainment industry, that I cant wait to show Mp3.Net too. I Was never great with words and programming skills are non existent. Some tell me its also the reason I couldn’t hold a note if life depended on it (I use the wrong side of my brain)J So before you use a strong word like “Dislike” around remember so far it seems all the stuff you like is the stuff written in mp3.net stone. J.

me: Another key thing is transparency, which you clearly recognize, but it means your internal communications need to be public as well. Where on the site will you publish your stats, revenue, emails logs, chat logs, etc? How are decisions made, especially regarding how the group’s money is spent? Do you have plans for a voting mechansim? What are the right and wrong ways to spend fund money?

mp3.net: Stats will be specific section built at – Stats.Mp3.net showing any and every stat to know to the online world Revenue will be – RDM.Mp3.Net – 100% transparent and will look like that rdm Spreadsheet.

Emails and chats will be dumped in an archive to be used for the Diary Board to use to write latest Diary. Karena who was one of the first producers has documented us for the last 3 years. Voting will be done by the multiple Boards and Councils that will be housed by Executive Producers and Founding Podcuers. A little bit of this can be seen at http://myproduction.mp3.net (you must be logged in) you will see in Prodcuer Appliction Council a Voting mechanism in place.

Regarding spending the money in The Fund it simply comes down to the 3 trusts that will each house 1/3 of the Fund monies

Trusts Named after the 3 type of individuals that make up mp3.net

Member Trust

Artist Trust

Producer Trust

Looking forward to responding to how each trust spends the money, and how the members producers and artists are involved in the process…

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Risa: Hey James, sounds good
I reread this stuff you sent back-

i still wonder how the councils you mentionned fit into this. Don’t members at each level need to participate in decisions about how to spend their fund money? are there regular or ongoing council discussions? does this happen on the forum? maybe we could just add “to participate in conversations on the mp3.net governance forum about how our site can continue to be better”

MP3: Exec Producers Sit on Boards

And

Founding Producers Sit on Councils

Boards are used for for specific sections that are mainly content oriented. Example Blog.Mp3.Net would be maintained and run by a group of Executive Producers who come together and house a Board called The Blog Board, who’s purpose is to have best possible blog that documents the growth of Mp3.Net. all the Admin functions for those Exec producers will be found at MyProduction.Mp3.Net

An example of a Council would be the Prodcuer application Council, you see this council is has every Founder on this council. So every Founding producer can be one of the 3 votes necessary for a applying producer to become full fledged Producer. Another example of a council will be Music Council, group of of Founding producers who have the music at heart will house it and see that Music.Mp3.Net is best Music site online. Or Prodcution Council in charge of making and seeing Prodcution.Mp3.Net to be one of the best freelance sites online and compete against the www.kasamba.com and www.elance.com and www.odesk.com of the world

Most of this stuff is being done on the board for now, but our coders are looking into a way of integrating something in our code. I just feel our producers need to step up and use any and all tools to better communicate. So board for now I guess

SO regarding the money The Fund is split in 3 trusts

So there would be 3 Councils that will be used to come up with multiple choices for The Members to Vote on I can, but first I would have to get into what each trust will use its funds for.

and for producers- maybe we could add something about the specific areas that producers work on?

there are 10 categories of Producers

Writer

Lawyer

Developer

Admin

Designer

Talent

Marketer

Model

Photographer

Film

But more specifcs will be worked into our freelance site found at http://infoseeksoftwaresystems.com/freelance/ that will become our http://production.mp3.net hopefully clearly documenting what producers have done and are doing, at the same time showcasing their work to the world. Not only in what they can do but actually what they have done for the network so all contribution will get documented, just need help to get it done J

Risa: and is there a way for producers to make money (or something) other than by refering?

MP3.NET: A producer makes money from clients that we refer to them on Production.Mp3.Net as I rambled above.

Risa: also- if you could jot down how people become members at each level that would be good. (i mean specifically, technically- obviously artists pay to join, but others? are producers voted in or something?)

To become a producer its as simple as opening yourself up to applying to a simple application form *attached and also can be found online form when logging in at mp3.net/comingsoon and clicking on MyProduction link

Risa: on that note- about paying i mean- maybe you could charge a sliding scale for users in developing countries. it would speed international adoption and just generally be more fair. a little tricky to organize, obviously, but fully doable.
ok..

Mp3.net: Hard to get done first time around, but you do need to know We have great fully branded wallet and invoice solution, because of 2 of our Founding Producers Paulo@ and Henry@, so yes it is doable but not right away.

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Hrmm, eh?

So many questions… so much that’s interesting, inspiring, exciting, heartening, potentially problematic, and soooo much that needs to be done for it to work.

For myself, for now, involvement is relatively limited, not least because I continue to give the vast majority of my labour, love and focus to Indyish.com. I’ve snuck into Mp3.net once or twice using James’ password, which he emailed to me after about two email conversations (the man is in many ways a shockingly open palm) and just fixed typos, or cleaned up a bit of prose. Aside from the positively galvanizing effect of being trusted like that, I have a writing instinct that makes this hard to resist. Aside from text edits, the contribution I am interested in making is one of naming areas of potential difficulty, of helping to talk through what exactly they are attempting; pushing in whatever small ways I can for them to follow through on their commitments to transparency and you know, the whole better world thing.

It’s in that spirit that I’ve gathered together these notes to share with you. I have many more which I’ll be posting soon. I will continue to think publicly about the project in this way, and I hope you’ll join me in casting critical light on it as it progresses- in the hope that a “true people’s company” can be all that it promises to be, and in awareness of the fact that it won’t be if people like us don’t help make it so.