Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

I just found this very cool tool, called MacStumbler.  It’s a wifi network sniffer. It will tell you what networks are around, and whether they are open or not, and what’s their strength. It’s useful to troubleshoot home hotspots, and find ones out in the world.

So I’m sitting at my now most favorite free wifi hotspot (Bart’s in Amherst - it’s quiet and easy to find an outlet) and I happen to be looking at MacStumbler at the same time as a bus drives by. The busses around here are called PVTA - for Pioneer Valley Transit Authority.

Anyway, as the bus rolls by, I see "PVTA_0333" come up on the MacStumbler, then leave! Yeah, really, really! It reminds me of the time a friend of mine and I were driving to Rhode Island on the highway. I had her laptop open, and I saw a "Ford_F350" network come, and go.

There is something called a "Stomp Box" - a wifi hotspot connected to a cellular 3G network. I think it’s a great idea for, say, an RV or something. But a car? Hmmm…. So when does this become ubiquitous? Maybe faster than we think.

David Geilhufe has a new post on his blog, entitled "Social Source Socialist?" It raises an important issue, and I’ve been wanting to talk a bit about the ways in which open source software in the nonprofit space is related to our economic system. This is pretty airy-fairy pie-in-the-sky stuff, but why have a blog if I can’t do that?

The nonprofit sector (often called the "Third Sector") is primarily (although not exclusively) geared toward the betterment of human lives. The "First Sector" (or is it the "Second Sector"? I never know.) which is capitalist enterprise, is primarily (although not exclusively) geared toward maximizing profit. It is true that this sector provides some betterment of lives based on employment, but as we’ve seen lately, this tends to mean paying as many people as little as possible, leading to their need of Third Sector services. The real betterment of lives this sector provides, at least in the last 20 years or so, has been the very few at the top.

One of my pet peeves, over the time I’ve worked with nonprofits, is the extent to which they’ve incorporated business (that is, capitalist enterprise) processes and ethos into their operations. I have to say that one of the most disheartening and troubling things that I come across is nonprofits that see other nonprofits as their "competitors." How is it that nonprofits "compete" to better all human lives? Doesn’t this detract from what the core ideals are? I understand the reasons that this happens - decreasing revenue, and competition for the same private donors, foundation grants, and government grants.  But I wonder if it is really necessary as many nonprofit "gurus" say it is.

It has always been my argument that the way an organization does its work is as important as the work it does. Corporate practices (competition, resisting unionization, efficiency as means of maximizing revenue, etc.) are usually not consonant with the goals and ideals of most nonprofit organizations.

So this leads me back to software. How could changes in the ways that nonprofits look at the way they do their work, and where they get their software change the kinds of software they use? If nonprofits thought differently, more collaboratively, a natural outgrowth of that would, I believe, be collaborative IT projects, leading to the kinds of economies of scale that large nonprofits (or corporations) can achieve. And it might lead to rethinking the use of closed-source commercial software in favor of open source software that can benefit the commons, instead of the few.

David says:

"Shouldn’t technology enable nonprofits to do more and to do it more effectively? Restricting nonprofit use of fundraising tools (through expensive proprietary software licenses) limits the number of people nonprofits can engage, the volume of donations nonprofits will receive, and ultimately, the universe of people nonprofits can help."

I couldn’t agree more.

First off, this post is in honor of the EFF Blogathon. Read all about it. I’m hoping that by writing this series, people who haven’t been aware of these issues become more aware, and understand the stakes involved.

In the first part of this series, I talked about my perspectives on open source software, and it’s position in the whole intellectual property debate of our times. The second post was about the evil of patents. This third post, I want to talk about the issues of intellectual property and creative work.

First, though, some background on my own "vested interests" (or, more honestly, lack thereof.) Although I am a published poet and author (that’s a stretch - I’ve written some articles that have been published in edited volumes, journals and a magazine few have heard of,) and I occasionally make music (that’s a real stretch,) I’ve never made a dime off of my creative work. I have made many dimes from my creation of software, but that was part one. So, for some, this does not make me one who should say much about copyright of creative work. But, I’m going to plunge in anyway.

And, also, in internet parlance, IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer). I am fascinated by the law, and read about the law, but I’ve never been to law school. Copyright law is a pretty obtuse field, and I don’t even begin to pretend I know it. What I’m going to talk about, though, is broad brush issues. What does the current landscape in copyright law look like, what are the issues arising, and who benefits from the current system, and who could benefit from a system that is more open.

Right now, creators of creative works are protected by copyright for their lifetimes, plus 70 years. So many works will be protected for 100 years or more. (Most work that was created prior to 1923 is in the public domain.) Copyright means that no one can take the work, whole or in part, and reproduce it without the consent of the copyright holder. Also, no one can produce derivative works without the consent of the copyright holder. Copyright is granted automatically when a work becomes tangible - but it is up to the holder of copyright to enforce copyright. (Some links are at the end of the article.) There are exceptions, called "Fair Use."

So what’s up now? Why is this such a huge issue, and what’s at stake? Very simply, technology. It all started with the Xerox machine, the audio cassette deck, and the VCR. These technologies, and the technologies that have followed (computers, scanners, DVD recorders, MP3 players, software for ripping CDs, etc.) have made copying creative works trivial. At this very moment, if I wanted to, I could find (and download) most of the music that has been recorded in the last 20 years or so, most of the movies, quite a number of books (text or audio), etc., and pay not a dime, except the cost of bandwidth and storage, which is minimal, compared to the cost of buying all of that content.

Of course, I’d be infringing on the copyright of all of those copyright holders, which, for the most part, are record companies, publishers, and movie studios, all of whom have big bucks, and all of whom are extremely unhappy at the current state of affairs.

Now I’m sure some of you reading this remember the brou-ha-ha about cassette tapes, and how that was going to spell the end of the music industry. Didn’t happen, did it? And VCRs were going to spell the end of the movie industry. Not hardly.(In the end, they benefitted from it mightily.) Now, of course, Napster’s progeny (currently named bittorrent) will spell the doom of both the music and movie industry. I have my doubts about that, too.

But they are very busy making their case that they will be done in by this technology, and, because they have all sorts of money on their side, they are getting heard in Washington (as well as Silicon Valley - more on DRM later.) The most important law that bears upon this is called the DMCA (or Digital Millenium Copyright Act.) This was a very broad law, that basically criminalizes production of technology that makes it easier to infringe on copyright, and increases the penalties for copyright infringement on the net.

There is a fascinating example of the new ways in which technology can be used to create and disseminate content in ways that, although violates present copyright laws, in fact hurts no one (and might be argued would help the owners of the copyright.)

In 2004, an artist named DJ Dangermouse created a mix of the Beatle’s "White Album", and rapper Jay-Z’s 2003 "Black Album," to create an album called the "Grey Album." It was only available as a bootleg, since he didn’t get permission from anyone to do a mix. The result was amazingly creative, and critically acclaimed. Although DJ Dangermouse violated the copyrights of varied owners, it would really be difficult to argue that the resulting work would in any way damage those owners of copyright. EFF has a good review of the legal issues.

Now some people realize that the internet could provide a really great vehicle for disseminating creative work. (Wow, really? Took them a while.) Enter ITMS (iTunes Music Store) and the reborn Napster. These two sites have different models (ITMS you download a file, and are free to do certain limited amount of things with it, Napster is a subscription service. Let the subscription lapse, and your music library goes silent.) What they have in common, though, is called DRM, or Digital Rights Management. One of these days, I’ll actually spend some time to write about DRM, because the concept and technology are interesting, and there are ongoing arguments as to whether it could work at all. But what the folks who are allowing you to download content for a cost are doing is hobbling that content in various ways to control your access to it.

This is a lot like commercial software. You don’t really own it, and you are told specifically how you can use it. Who does this benefit? Like software, it’s basically the big, powerful people who already have lots and lots of money. Most musicians and authors, like software developers, make a living (actually, many don’t), and that’s about it. Some do better, many never make a living.

So, as the content industry (record companies, movie studios and publishers) move in the direction of disseminating content electronically, but in ways that strictly control how you can enjoy it, there is another movement, that is a combination of people who’ve learned lessons from open source software, musicians that have always been friendly to music copying, and content creators who would like to more directly be in control of their own creative content.

This movement is made up of small, independent music distributors that allow you to download, sample and/or buy MP3s (sans DRM) online and creative authors licensing their work with open source-like licenses, allowing you to create derivative works from their own work. Let me talk about why I think this model, rather than the model being fostered by the RIAA and MPAA works in everyone’s interest (er, except for people who want to make oodles of money off of other people’s work.)

1) Creators of content can choose how and when to disseminate their creative work - they can choose someone to help them promote it, or not.

2) As happens often, word-of-mouth and freely released copies of content and derivative works actually increase the interest (therefore revenue generated) in the creative work. Here’s a new example. And here’s another, from a sci-fi author.

3) Consumers of creative work get maximal control of how they can use the content they have obtained (either for a fee, or for free).

4) Authors of creative work can be inspired to create new work based on the work of others, taking it in directions that are unpredictable, and potentially very interesting (like the Grey Album, except in this scenario, DJ Dangermouse won’t get ceast-and-desist letters.)

I think this is a much better model than the model that only lets you play music you bought on pre-approved devices, only read a book you bought on your desktop computer, and not also on your laptop and palmtop, and continue to pay a fee for music, and if you stop paying, you lose the music. I can’t believe that most consumers will put up with this for a long time (although I have been amazed before about what consumers will put up with when it comes to technology.) It will be interesting to see how things finally shake out.

Links:

- basic copyright FAQ
- wikipedia entry on copyright
- EFF on DMCA
- ALA’s guide to the DMCA
- Creative Commons

Blog-a-thon tag:
EFF15

I hate spam. I always have. But lately, I don’t have to deal with much, which is true for most people. Between server-side bayesian filtering, and client-side filtering, only two or three spam messages gets into my actual inbox everyday. Very nice.

But now, it appears that spam is making it’s horrible way to the web. The first I heard of this was the blogs (on blogger, mostly) designed only to be created to manipulate search engines.

Now, there is a trend in domain name hosting. People will register a domain, test it for traffic, and use it only to deliver Google or Yahoo ads. If that domain can generate one or two dollars more than the cost of the registration, then they keep the domain. If you do this for thousands of domains, this can generate thousands of dollars in revenue.

I imagine that, like bayesian spam filtering, tools like del.icio.us and other collaborative bookmarking tools will mean that people will come across those blogs and domains less and less (and thus not make them cost-effective,) but in the meantime, we have spam to deal with.

As I’ve stepped out of the direct role of being a nonprofit technology consultant, I’ve realized that it is giving me a chance to see things from a bit of a different perspective. I’ve been faithfully following a number of recent discussions on nonprofit blogging, social bookmarking,  new and exciting tools, and the like. I’m having fun reading all the great posts on the blogs of friends and colleagues whose opinions I value highly (like Beth Kanter, Deborah Finn, Jon Stahl, Katrin Verclas, Art McGee, David Geilhufe, Marnie Webb and others) that I didn’t have time to read before. This is all very cool, and makes the geek part of me happy. I’m beginning to wonder, though, what is the role of the "über" consultants, as I’ll name them (us? do I qualify?)

I spent a lot of my time as a technology consultant helping nonprofits see the value of open source software. For the first few years I was doing this, I would use the words "open source" and I’d see this glazed, distant look in their eyes. They had no idea what it meant, why it was important, and how it could help them. For the most part, my clients were doing really, really well when I could get them to remember to test their backups, run virus protection, and troubleshoot why the printer doesn’t work.

I can guarantee you that if you said the words "nonprofit blogging," "RSS" or "social bookmarking" to your average E.D., or even CIO/CFO you’d see that same glazed distant look. I spent a bit of time recently helping my congregation migrate their website (since I, the major webmaster, was leaving to go to seminary), and they were grappling with issues that we’d been hashing out oh, 3-4 years ago, when we first started talking with organizations about CMS vs HTML.

Does this mean we should stop talking about all of those cool new things happening in webland? No, not at all! There is a lot for all of us to learn with these new tools and ideas, and adding them to the nonprofit technology toolkit is a great idea. And disseminating those ideas to people who are in a position to use them is important. But I worry sometimes that we (I include myself in this, for sure) are acting a bit too much like the hare, and not enough like a turtle booster. "Slow and steady wins the race." Nonprofits still struggle with data management issues, the sector still struggles from lack of standards, there is still an amazing lack of inexpensive, good, solid software for nonprofit mission-critical tasks.

This is incredibly cool. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it. A lot. If true: get an intel Mac, run Mac software, Windows software and UNIX software (via X windows) too. Wowie Zowie! Not only a geeks dream, but a very nice solution to all sorts of problems.

Via digg.

Today, in the New York Times, there is an article (reg. required), that talks about how people are throwing away their old PCs, in an effort to rid themselves of spyware, viruses and the like. "throwing out a computer ‘is a rational response,’said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project…"

A rational response?? Rational would be to wipe Windows and replace Linux. Rational might be, like the woman pictured, throw away the box, and get a Mac (or, for the brave, you can wipe windows and put Mac OS on the same box). I can’t quite believe we have gotten to the point where people are not only willing to put up with the viruses and spyware, but are willing to go out and buy another Windows machine! Microsoft, who makes a decent amount on each purchase of a Windows machine, must be jumping for joy. They are entering the anti-spyware business, and, of course, they will "not [be] providing protection for people who have earlier versions of the company’s operating system."

First off, MS entering the anti-spyware business is kind of like a vendor who sold you locks that are incredibly easy to pick, coming in and saying they’ll clean up after the mess created by a break in (for a fee, of course). And, if the mess is too much, they’ll sell you more locks!

How long are people going to put up with this nonsense? And how long are nonprofits, where every dollar spent on new PCs means a dollar that doesn’t feed someone, or give someone services, or pays for medicine, or an activist on the hill, going to put up with this?

This is a very cool tool, discovered via my buddy Deborah Finn.

H2O playlist is basically a way to share lists of content about a specific topic. It’s a great way to create syllabi and other teaching resources that others can share. I can think of a number of ways this would be useful. In some ways, why not just create your syllabus on H2O playlist, and use that as a way to share it with your students? Once lots of things start to get characterized (I was amazed to learn that, for example, the Tao Te Ching was already on quite a number of playlists.)

And, the ability to make RSS feeds out of playlists, new playlists, etc. is fascinating.  And, like wikipedia, the more people that use it, the more useful it is for everyone - so I beg to differ with Deborah - use it! (I’m creating a playlist now on the progressive religious movement.)

The one odd thing - just about all of the playlists that I’ve seen so far either have 5 "bulbs" of influence, or none. So I think the algorithm for figuring out influence needs some tweaking. :-)

Why on earth did they pick the most obnoxious, polluting, gas guzzling, view obstructing vehicle possible to promote their new version of Windows Automotive? I guess it’s in character.

Via Engaget, of course.