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I was on the brink of mindlessly clicking through the ACLU action center as usual to send an email opposing SOPA. But then I read their boilerplate text, and ended up cancelling the letter to my rep and instead sending this quick note to the ACLU:

Your SOPA suggested letter text supports current copyright law, and also backhandedly supports PIPA (the Senate version of the bill).

This is far too weak of a position. As a donor, I ask you to take a stronger position that current copyright law unjustly restricts free speech, and that no further enforcement measures should be instituted until that fundamental problem is addressed.

At least take on BOTH of these bills strongly. Most of the significant Internet is blacked out today to oppose both bills -- why would you cede so much ground to copyright maximalists? We have the support to oppose and defeat both bills.

For reference, here was their text:

While I believe it's important to protect copyrighted material online, the language of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is flawed and will lead to the blocking of lawful content.

Unlike the Senate version of the bill, SOPA eliminates the concept of sites 'dedicated to infringing activity' and enables law enforcement to target all sites that contain some infringing content -- no matter how trivial. The potential for impact on non-infringing content is much greater under SOPA than under other versions of this bill. Sites with user-generated content, like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, would be especially vulnerable, as one small piece of infringing content could lead to blocking the entire site.

Even though proposed changes would narrow the amount of lawful content impacted, the changes don't go far enough. It is still likely that search engines will end up blocking access to perfectly legal online content.

Congress should focus not just on the goal of protecting copyright owners, but also protecting the speech rights of consumers and providers who are reading and producing wholly non-infringing content. Congress must eliminate the collateral damage to protected non-infringing content. Only in that way will Congress truly achieve its goal of protecting authors while respecting the constitutional right to free speech.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I dislike it when good organizations take weak positions unnecessarily. Usually this is not a problem with the ACLU, for me. It doesn't help that I keep seeing this meme everywhere in the anti-SOPA/PIPA conversation: "I agree we need to do something about piracy, but not this..."

I don't think we need to do anything to fix violations of an extraordinarily unjust law until the law itself is fixed. I don't find that to be a very radical position.

I will be helping to represent the FSF at FOSDEM next month in Brussels. I'm speaking in the Legal Issues Devroom on Saturday 2012-02-04. The presentation is called "Is copyleft being framed?":

This short talk will address the following questions, to inspire discussion and contemplation about how we frame descriptions of the state of licensing in free software.

• Numbers are increasingly being cited to show that the use of copyleft licenses, specifically the GPL, is declining. What do these numbers actually show, who is propagating them, and why? What do or might other numbers show?
• Is the "percentage of free software projects which use copyleft licenses" a useful way to judge the success of copyleft? Does an increase in the percentage of projects using non-copyleft permissive licenses indicate a failure of copyleft?
• As a small related case study, what role have the licensing terms of popular mobile application stores played in this debate, and how have those terms changed the frame of the discussion?

Let me know if you'll be there too!

I'm trying to figure out how to get two 27"x33" framed pictures (glass) safely from Detroit to Boston. In reading about Delta's policies on fragile luggage, I learned about their Christmas Tree policy. Who knew.

Christmas Trees

Do you want to bring some holiday cheer to your destination? You can indeed bring your Christmas tree with you. We will accept cut Christmas trees as limited-release baggage on all flights within the United States, including flights to/from Hawaii. However, all Christmas trees will be subject to baggage allowance and baggage size restrictions, as well as some other rules:

• Trees need to be adequately packaged with the root ball or cut base and all branches wrapped and secured using a burlap-type material.
• If you are traveling into Hawaii and checking a Christmas tree as baggage, you must include it on your declaration form and the tree must pass agricultural inspection.

One policy I'm glad I don't have to concern myself with this Christmas? The Cremated Remains policy. "TSA suggests the passenger purchase a temporary or permanent crematory container of lighter material such as wood or plastic which can easily be x-rayed." Is there a Ralph's around here?

I welcome suggestions for transporting/shipping these pictures.

Mako's article "In Defense of Negativity" should begin with a Mitch Hedberg epigraph:

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.

Google Maps is now mapping the indoors. I saw an ad for this while passing through MSP yesterday (given how much time I spend on the Internet, it's strange and a little embarrassing to learn about new things on the Internet from airport billboards), since one of their initial targets is the infamous Mall of America.

Detailed floor plans automatically appear when you’re viewing the map and zoomed in on a building where indoor map data is available. The familiar “blue dot” icon indicates your location within several meters, and when you move up or down a level in a building with multiple floors, the interface will automatically update to display which floor you’re on. All this is achieved by using an approach similar to that of ‘My Location’ for outdoor spaces, but fine tuned for indoors.

Thoughts about this:

• Okay, having a map of Ikea or an airport on my phone might be kind of nice.
• Shouldn't they have launched this years ago when people still went to malls?
• Shouldn't they have launched this at least earlier in the year, in time for people to know about it and have it before the one time each year when people who don't go to malls still maybe go to the mall?
• How does it know where you are, when cell and GPS so often don't work in these places? "fine tuned for indoors" is a very mysterious phrase. Based on nearby access points?
• Is your location also being transmitted if you use this service? In other words, will Google now know which stores you shop at, how many times you use the restroom, and whether you were actually shopping for gifts for other people?
• Relatedly, will this be free software? Or will it rely on proprietaryness in order to do things users would prefer it didn't do? (Answer: It's proprietary software, part of the existing proprietary Google Maps mobile application.)
• Will they sell data to the stores and malls?
• Will they start indicating various promotions on the maps?
• Will these promotions be targeted based on your past meandering behavior?
• Are they mapping less-commercial spaces, like museums?
• Are they making the map data available for others to use? Especially for truly public spaces?
• How do we get the functional part of this into OpenStreetMap?
• Is Google secretly working on computer-piloted mobility scooters?
• Where am I?

Title from John Ashbery

I just missed an Iron Blogger deadline. I knew I was going to miss it, because I was going to be on a plane Sunday night, not landing until after 6am Monday morning (the deadline is 6am EST Mondays).

The penalty for missing the deadline is putting $5 in the drinking/eating pool. I then realized that I was fully prepared to pay $4.95 for a GoGo in-flight internet pass, in order to be able to post and save myself a nickel. It being an overnight flight, I intended to sleep as much as possible, but I pulled out my laptop to do the post while I was enjoying my complimentary beverage.

That's when I discovered the $4.95 pass was not available for my flight. The $4.95 pass was still advertised, but when attempting to purchase it, I was instead delivered an HTTP error. I hit up the rep for some live chat, and he explained it was because the flight was too long. When I asked why that policy made sense for a flight on which nearly everyone would be sleeping anyway, and explained that I just wanted the internet for a few minutes, he disconnected me.

After thinking about it some more, and failing to sleep, I decided I was actually willing to pay $12.95 for the next tier pass, in order to do the post. Doing so would preserve my honor, keep a streak going, and at the same time, generate the topic for the post!

The $12.95 one wouldn't work either. When attempting to purchase a pass, I was delivered an error which said that I needed to purchase a pass to use the internet to purchase a pass to use the internet to purchase a pass to...

As it turns out, I guess I paid $5 for a post topic. And no sleep.

I'd like to claim that I thought of something before Mark Bittman did, but actually, he thought of it first, though I thought of it before I read his thinking of it, and it was within the same week (maybe), and my version is a little different.

It being Fall, Boston Organics has been trying to bury me with fresh cranberries. I realized that even after making cranberry sauce, cranberry jalapeno dipping sauce, and cranberry orange walnut bread, I'd still have cranberries left.

I thought cranberry syrup would be a useful addition to the bar, so I made some, borrowing the recipe from Smitten Kitchen (use the food processor to chop the fresh cranberries unless you enjoy chasing small round objects all around your kitchen).

At first I was working on a cocktail with the syrup and and Q Ginger, which I'd just stumbled on at Julio's during a trip in search of Ransom gin. Q Ginger is a bit misnamed — the cardamom and coriander flavors are very strong. Altogether, it's a good match with cranberry, but I'm not yet happy enough with any of my experiments to suggest that someone else should drink them.

Then, Anjali told me about how she'd added some Campari to her cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinner. That led me to think about doing the reverse, and adding cranberry to my Campari — the Negroni being one of my favorite Campari cocktails.

About an hour after this conversation, I turned to Bittman's column in last week's Times magazine on using up Thanksgiving leftovers, and there's a recipe for a Cranberry Negroni. Weird, huh? I don't think I'd like an entire equal part of cranberry sauce though — and I don't think cranberry sauce is ideal here (but as a use of leftovers, sure, why not).

Cranberry Negroni

• 1 oz Bombay Dry Gin
• 1 oz Noilly Prat (or other sweet vermouth)
• 3/4 oz Campari
• 1/4 oz cranberry syrup
• Orange twist

Shake with ice; strain into a cocktail glass. Squeeze the orange twist over the glass, and then discard or drop in (I confess, I removed it before drinking).

Next up, a Cranberry Old Pal?

Connectivity can be a force for autonomy and freedom, or it can be used for control and subjugation.

The Nintendo 3DS is an example of the latter.

Okay, yeah, I just said a cute video game console is a threat to personal freedom. Hear me out. If you haven't read the highlights of Nintendo's Terms of Service for the 3DS yet, you should do that.

On one hand, it's "just" a games console. On the other hand, it's a computer, marketed to children, which monitors your location (based on proximity to wifi access points), uploads your photos and messages to Nintendo's servers (giving them a license to re-use that information in various ways), and tracks your activity. Now that's entertainment.

If you wanted your Nintendo computer to stop doing those things, you could try to install some 3rd-party "homebrew" software on it. Except then, according to the Terms, Nintendo would "brick" your device — render it inoperable, when the modified software is detected. Would you accept Ford disabling your car because you had a mechanic friend fix a problem using some aftermarket parts? Microsoft breaking your computer hardware because you installed Firefox?

The ability to stop your electronics from spying on you is an important freedom to defend, even if you don't ever plan on purchasing a Nintendo device. Such terms, and the Digital Restrictions Management software that enforces them, are a problem in all areas of digital life. It's the same fundamental strategy as Apple controlling what you can install on the iPhone or iPad, or Sony sending police officers to a programmer's house because he showed other people how to modify their own computers to make them able to run non-Sony-approved software.

If we don't set a strong precedent against this behavior, it will become more prevalent. If we lose the ability to install what we like on our computers, then we lose the ability to use those computers in any way that isn't pre-approved by a corporation. We lose it not only because we ourselves can't install some software — maybe we hate changing anything on our computers at all — but because the people who write the software we rely on lose that freedom, which ends up impacting even the most non-technical of computer users.

Companies like to portray anyone arguing for this freedom as criminals just wanting to illegally copy software. But that's obviously not true -- a person who follows all laws, even the most absurd, might still want to install something to stop Nintendo from receiving copies of her photos or reporting on her location. Companies use the threat of illegal copying to justify massive infringements on real personal freedoms.

People often say, "well, just don't buy it then". I agree — don't buy it. But don't think this is merely a consumer issue. Terms like Nintendo's are backed by the force of criminal law — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US for example — which can put you in jail for helping people to modify their own computers. So this is more than a mere preference issue, it's also one of law and ethics. It's not a free market when one side has coercive state resources in play to prop up its arbitrary business model.

To help send this message, I just donated to send 5 bricks to Nintendo. I hope you'll send one or five too. The campaign has a goal of sending 200 bricks by the end of today (Monday, May 16th). Nintendo clearly wants to get into the brick-making business, so surely they'll appreciate the extra inventory.

(Disclosure: While I do work for the Free Software Foundation and am paid partly to run the Defective by Design campaign, I really did donate, and support this campaign personally.)

Today was my first day as the new executive director at the Free Software Foundation.

I'm really excited about the opportunity to do more at the FSF -- but also sad that I won't have the pleasure of working with Peter Brown any more, as he is moving on to more challenges. Peter's been an amazing mentor and boss to me in the eight years I've been with the FSF, and it's not going to be the same without him.

Along with the change in job positions, I have relocated from Seattle back to Boston.

This continues to be my personal space, not an official FSF channel -- but this is big personal news for me so I wanted to share :).

My FSF colleague Brett Smith and I will be making the case against software patents on a panel at the Churchill Club in Mountain View, CA, the evening of February 16th. Hope to see End Software Patents supporters in the audience!

More information: Churchill Club Panel Discussion on Software Patents — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software

I made smoky grilled tofu (based on the recipe in Veganomicon) on a bed of collard greens and maple-glazed roasted beets and carrots.

Bigger pictures are here.

CLEMSON, S.C. (CBS/WSPA/AP) A man was struck by an SUV in Clemson Monday evening after police say he was playing a real-life version of the video game "Frogger" on a highway.

...as it always does.

It's them, I promise. My camera may have been drinking Maker's Manhattans when I wasn't looking. It was an awesome show -- they played all material from their new album, Never Stop. I agree with the Guardian comment about them -- "If the Coen Brothers put together a jazz trio, perhaps it would be like this..."

On Saturday I also saw Bela Fleck and the Flecktones there. I don't have a crappy picture to show for it, but it was a great performance -- which included the 12 Days of Christmas performed in 12 keys and 12 time signatures (or so they claimed, I am in no position to verify that) and the surprise (to me) appearance of Alash, the Siberian throat singers.

Another aptronym:

The latest innovation: toilets — porcelain toilets — that have been thrown away (or used as road base). Surprisingly, it wasn't easy to track down the toilets at first. But Burns hit the jackpot when he heard from Michael Gross, the aptly named marketing manager of the Zanker Road Landfill near San Jose, Calif.

Trash To Treasure: From Toilets To Tiles : The Picture Show : NPR

More aptronyms here.

The Vitamin D debate, which is big here in Seattle where we've heard of this "sun" thing but never actually seen it (and also especially a concern for vegans), just got even more confusing.

Despite mounting pressure to urge many Americans to sharply boost their vitamin D levels, new government recommendations are not advocating a huge increase in the amount of the "sunshine vitamin" that people get.

The United States and Canada asked the Institute of Medicine, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences, to update the official vitamin D recommendations for the first time since 1997. A 14-member expert committee convened for the task concluded that most Americans and Canadians up to age 70 need no more than 600 international units of vitamin D per day. The elderly may need as much as 800, the committee concluded.

The Checkup - New vitamin D recommendations

Jason Vale is a world champion arm wrestler. He also insisted (insists?) that eating apricot seeds is a good way to fight cancer. A court ordered him to stop selling the seeds under that pretense. He refused, and went to jail for five years.

I would say, this guy sticks to his guns.