Results tagged “creativecommons”

Hey, it's another Polk post, folks!

Those who still need to register to vote in time for the February 5 presidential primaries need to do so by tomorrow, January 22nd. Re-registering is necessary whenever you move, change your name, or change your political party affiliation. You can download a form here and mail it in by tomorrow (must be postmarked January 22nd) or deliver it in person. Here's a list of all the local county elections offices. The address for San Francisco's office is

We are super creeped out right now. We've had a few mysterious, little bites appear on our wrists that itched like a bitch the first day and have stuck around for two or three weeks. They have consistently snuck up on us, occurring about a week apart and causing our night terrors to go medieval a few times, until we finally got ahold of ourselves somewhat, thankyouverymuch.

It was with absolutely zero shock that we read yesterday's article in the Examiner about a police sting aimed at drivers who cruise through the crosswalk when people are trying to cross the street at Taraval and 21st. The sting continues, as

San Francisco police are conducting undercover pedestrian sting operations to cite drivers “blatantly violating the pedestrian right of way.” On Wednesday, officers at Taraval Street and 21st Avenue cited 45 drivers in just two and a half hours from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., according to police.

WE LOVE IT WHEN ROSS MIRKARIMI SAVES THE DAY!!!!!! Remember when he stopped a robbery? And then when he saved the life of a guy in Buena Vista Park? And today, he caught two people involved in a drive-by shooting!!! (Thanks to commenter Rah for calling our attention to the story!)

It's the latest in the Tsk Tsk Supervisorial codes of conduct battle front!

--Audacia Ray, the editor of the sex worker zine $pread and a Fleshbot [nsfw] contributor, talks at Modern Times about the commodification of sex on the Internet. 7:30 p.m., 888 Valencia (x 20th)

We here at SFist are always eager to be entertained, whether in the form of governmental coiffure trends or pop cultural parodies.

Tonight: The Canvas Gallery is hosting "Ask a Scientist," with Nancy Garland, a Technology Development Master at the U.S. Department of Energy, discussing Alternative Energy: A Cleaner Future for Cars.

Hey, remember when SFist Rita asked for Manuel Jiminez' thoughts regarding The Daly's call for Bush's impeachment at the Board of Supervisors? Well, Manuel went and responded! There's nothing that SFist loves more than people actually paying attention. Left in SF notes that the work at Bernal Park starts tomorrow (and links to a Bernal neighborhood blog we hadn't seen before). Josh Wolf heads to a the federal building for a grand jury appearance in vain. And if you thought the Dykes on Bikes trademark case was over, think again.

Last time we saw Merlin Mann in the flesh, he was graciously stealing us a beer at the Google party we crashed together after his Web 1.0 party. The first time we saw Merlin Mann was drinking a free beer at a Creative Commons party at the Swedish American Hall. In other words, wherever there's beer and bloggers, you'll find Merlin talking out his ass and taking names.

SFist is a long-ass way out of kindergarten but some lessons learned then have stayed with us, like "don't eat paint", that's a good one. Or how about learning how to tie your shoes? Very helpful. But the best and most important lesson we learned is that it's good to share. Sharing is cool because SFist can't have everything but maybe if we share what we have someone else can share what they have, and we covet, right back at us.

The concept of mash-ups is all the rage with marketers and music bloggers these days, but Negativland has been appropriating sounds, images and text and re-arranging them into new works of art since 1980. The members of the collective (for lack of a better word) mix original music and materials with bits and bytes from corporately owned mass culture and re-create them into original political and artistic statements. Culture jamming? They coined the term.

Hey local creative-types! You're the best. Even though your parents told you that getting a degree in polka-dots from Hampshire College was a waste of time, now is the time for all good artists to come to the aid of this website. You see, SFist -- in fact, all of the cities in the Gothamist network -- have a problem: boring banners. You may notice, while browsing the site, that sometimes the top-of-the-page banner advertises for other cities' sites; and on those other cities' sites, sometimes they advertise for us. Sadly, those advertising-banners are a little, um, assy. So we'd like to invite you folks to whip up some of this so called "art" that you do, to serve as an ambassadorial backdrop to our logo.

So a bunch of anarchist yutzes from the suburbs decided to protest G8 at that hotbed crossroads of capitalism, 23rd Street and Bartlett, and in the melee, threw a hammer at a cop's head. The cop's in the hospital and three yutzes are in the clink. Our feeling is, what's the point of having all these Sureno and Norteno Mission Street gangs if they're not actually going to protect us from outsider threats? But we'll save all that for tomorrow's Blotter. SF Indybay was at the protest, and posted some pictures and coverage of the fight. KRON 4's new aggregator-blog, The Bay Area Is Talking, which was liveblogging it, then put up the Indybay pictures on their site. Bloggers love bloggers, right? More publicity makes for higher hit counts, right? Nope. Indybay sent an angry note to KRON accusing them of copyright infringement and demanding that the pictures be taken down. KRON 4 said they thought the use of the pictures constituted permissible fair use, but agreed to take them down and link to them instead. There's some fascinating ironies here about anarchists invoking the august majesty of federal United States Code section 17, a group called "IndyBay" censoring the content of another independent media provider (yup, KRON's indie), a member of the mainstream media going all Creative Commons, and leftists avoiding publicity for their public demonstration -- but mostly, it seems to have devolved into a fight where people are mixing up copyright and trademark law. Maybe SFist Jackson and the EFF can clear this up for you at their panel discussion next Tuesday, the 19th --"Bloggers -- Know Your Rights."

Josh Wolf, a local vlogger, posted the following recently on his "The Revolution Will Be Televised" blog about Current TV's new rights agreement and payment schedule for content submitted to Current:

Well, SFist got our legal history off to a good start -- we're involved in a court case, and we're not the defendant! Nor are we the plaintiff -- though if you don't abide by the terms of our Creative Commons license, we will come after you, and we've been in the same room as Lawrence Lessig, so watch out.

It's good to be a nerd. At least that's how SFist feels after hanging out at the Swedish American Hall, taking full advantage of the open bar, nodding our head to the DJ's beats, nibbling on tidbits from the trays of finger food and stuffing our bag with schwag at the Creative Commons party last night. Intellectual property lawyers sure know how to party!

However things aren't all hunky-dory down in Cupertino, either. One iTunes user is suing Apple for anti-competitive practices for not providing iTunes downloads in a format that works on players besides the iPod. Apple has had a tradition of making their software exclusive to their hardware, though until the AAC format they have had very open media standards (and a small hardware marketshare). Apple is also a plaintiff in two cases involving leaks to the web of details on their upcoming products -- the first regarding their firewire audio device, the latest involving their sub-$500 desktop and office suite which was revealed by ThinkSecret. Looks like somebody inside Apple has taken their non-disclosure agreement a little too lightly.

In a victory for the Beastie Boys, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today declined to review an earlier decision which upheld a lower-court dismissal of a case brought by James Newton which asked that the Beasties pay licensing fees on both the recording and the underlying composition for a sample of his 1978 "Choir," which was used on Hello Nasty track Pass the Mic. The Beasties had already paid licensing fees for the recording, and the court ruled that: