Yesterday I received an 750-word from the Wikileaks email address (@sunshinepress.org) in response to my critical article about the service. I'd love to reprint it, but the author had the temerity to preface it with the request "off the record." There are journalists who support the notion that a unilateral request of "off the record" need not be honore

Morning newspaper?
Don't drive and read on the road to work.
Passing by the woods on a snowy morning...
Can't we just leave those carbon suckers in the ground?

Search Engine Land reports that ArsTechnica reports that the Computer & Communications Industry Association (an organization led by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and other software vendors) has created the Defend Fair Use initiatve. They'd like the big media companies to recognize fair use in their copyright statements. One can call it AstroTurfing (though no one will, since people side with the software companies over media companies), but they do raise a good point (even if the slogan "Stand up for your RIGHT to use the content YOU PAY FOR" is illustrated by a couple cuddling-- not standing up-- on the couch). It's such a good point, I think YouTube should take heed and listen!

Dan Gillmor's Citizen Media blog, which normally just draws in the "citizen media gripes" in the comments like Seth, Delia, and myself (ok, I took a break for several weeks this summer), now has drawn a whole good deal more readers out of the woodwork. The impetus? In a post titled Another Gross Journalistic Failure, Dan offers a jeremiad against the mortage-morphing industry (previously known as the financial sector) and their apparent cheerleaders in the dead-tree business:

I work in an industry segment where our software revolves around not one, but two, TLA's (Three-Letter Acronyms). They are BPM (Business Process Management) and SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). The headline writers in the trade press love them, the names sometimes just function as "Brad and Angelina" due in the celebrity magazines. If there is room in the cosmic plan for Brad and Angelina to stay together, why not BPM and SOA? 

The entry I edited: the one for the word wiki.

But being as I'm writing about Shirky, I thought I'd look at the ol' bear's list before it goes into permanent hiberation.

"People can use it any way they want to. It has no inherent ethical or moral quality, though it does have its own special power."

I invite you to come up with a possible explanation of what "it" is:

a) Wikipedia
b) a blog
c) a Colt .45
d) the new Oral-B computerized toothbrush
e) the 82nd Airborne Division

I have a confession to make, which may surprise close readers of this space. Earlier this year, I wanted to actually start a blog-- you know, write off the cuff like a blubbering fool about any topic that crossed somebody else's mind. I needed help, some of my curmudgeonly correspondents to help breathe life into a made-up person named Fabio Folio. Nobody wanted to help, and then I discovered that a Google search revealed that “Fab Folio” was the name of a real person in Italy, so I retired the character. I'd like to say that my second choice was “Valerie Flame,” but I can't find the piece of paper where I wrote that. I bring this up to expand on some points about fake blogs (flogs?).

Since then, the GOP has blossomed into the party of no accountability. After all, accountability would be tantamount to admitting error, and admitting error would invite investigations, and that would just get in the way of the important things a government does, like wage war and cut taxes. As Dick Cheney said, in a Saturday night prepared release defending Rumsfeld: "People ought to get off his case and let him do his job." Move on, indeed. The talking points from Republican Senators today (outside of McCain and Warner) were on that message: let's not dwell on the past; let's focus on the present, and the future. I wouldn't be surprised if we have an incumbent President who campaigns on the same theme, to forget the past.