Washington, DC - Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry - Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
Right after the election the Obama transition team opened up Change.gov, the transition website, with, well, not very good reviews. The site was short on specifics, it copied and pasted information from the campaign site, there was no space for interaction and discussion with citizens and there was no understanding of copyright.
Copyright? Who cares Shaun?
Well, you should care. All of the issues mentioned above have been addressed and yesterday Change.gov added the most open copyright protection to the information on the site that is available today through the Creative Commons Attribution system created by Lawrence Lessig at Stanford. Lessig is a darling of the social media crowd and started a movement this year, Change Congress, to attempt to take money out of politics. For Lessig it is money that is the root of political evil.
The Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 allows anyone to do the following:
to Remix — to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must attribute this work to NAME OF ORG.
This is a very good sign that the Obama administration understands the power of the internet lies in collaboration, interaction, sharing and community.
Instead of protecting every single bit of information on Change.gov as copyrighted with no rights to re-distribute, share, or remix Change.gov understands that if it did that, the nation would question Obama's commitment to open government.
Now Lessig and several other big names from the technology world have started a site called "An Open Transition" where they list three principles for open government that they would like Obama to follow. You can read about them here and sign the petition if you would like.
Lessig is renown for his presentations that he does in a very creative and unique way. Here is his presentation about "An Open Transition" and his call to arms for Obama regarding openness and copyright.
I'd encourage you to learn more and to sign the petition.
Washington, DC - Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry - Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
