Part 1: Greg writes an article that compares the Howard Dean candidacy and its fundraising prowess (and grab of a plurality, though not a majority, of the MoveOn primary) to a Smart Mob a la Howard Rheingold’s seminal work. The next day, he points to an article (via Doc Searls) that points out that it took the Dean campaign 84 days to raise $3.2 million, and since then it’s almost doubled the amount, with more than $2 million coming in over the Internet. And counting. People putting their money where their mouths are?
Part 2: Larry Lessig and the folks at eldred.cc have been fighting to get a bill introduced into Congress that would tip some of the balance of the copyrighted works back into the public domain—by making owners of works that have been in copyright for more than fifty and less than 75 years pay a $1 renewal fee each year. If the fee is not paid, the copyright lapses and the work falls into the public domain. This would help to unlock works that have no significant commercial potential, but cultural significance into the public domain.
On June 24 Lessig posted that he had found sponsors for this, the Public Domain Enhancement Act, in the form of Lofgren and Doolittle, Democrat and Republican (respectively) Representatives from California. The bill has since been introduced. We can only hope…