Can’t get enough of my beautiful voice?  Want to hear me yammer on about Diebold, democracy and free culture for almost an hour?  Then check out my radio spot on RedQuyn’s The Big Picture, on Transitions Radio Network.  The intro is really trippy, but the interview is pretty solid, and I’m slowly cutting down on the “um”s and “y’know?”s.  Maybe I need to go on the “um” patch or get “um” chewing gum or something.

I had the opportunity to speak on a panel at the Knowledge Held Hostage conference at UPenn last Friday, and had a wonderful time!  You can see funny pictures of me in a suit, and you can see an article about the conference which mentions the Diebold case at eSchool News online.  Unfortunately, Swarthmore College doesn’t look very good in the article, because in my 5 minute “speech” I was only able to talk about how Swarthmore wimped out at first, not how they were wonderfully supportive afterwards.  I can’t emphasize enough that all of the people in the administration were behind us 100%, but that they were afraid of Diebold suing the college for copyright infringement.

In case you aren’t aware, a copyright infringement lawsuit is one of the few things that can bankrupt a well-endowed college, because of the absurdly high statutory damages possible in a worst-case scenario.  About the only other kind of lawsuit with this power is a class-action medical lawsuit with hundreds and thousands of claimants.  The college’s reaction was therefore understandable; their first duty is to keep the college running for the sake of the students.  However, I believe that they also have a duty to stand up for democracy and freedom of speech, and I think that they were a bit too risk-averse, as I think it was clear from the beginning that Diebold did not have a case.  Naturally this is even more clear in hindsight.

For those who have forgotten, I will be speaking at the Knowledge Held Hostage conference at UPenn tomorrow.  If you don’t already know, it’s probably too late because I’m on the first panel at like 8:30 😛  But it will rock!

Also, if you missed my spot on the Al Franken show, here’s an Ogg Vorbis audio clip of it. 

Winamp should play Oggs fine in Windows, Mac users probably want the Ogg Vorbis Quicktime component, which should let you play Ogg Vorbis in iTunes.

I will be on Air America Radio at 2pm EST on the O’Franken Factor, talking about the Diebold case of course.  A few minutes ago I was on Arnie Arnesen‘s show, which was very enjoyable!  Sorry I didn’t blog about it in time for all y’all to tune in, but hopefully there will be a recording of the show available online.  Thanks again to Mother Jones for spreading the word about us!

Does this article on the free rider problem tell us anything about why our “communist fruit bowl” failed on our hall on Mertz 1st South freshman year?  I definitely remember there being spoiled fruit there often, and it might have been due to our “take a fruit, leave a fruit” policy.