Open Source Media - Anti-Open Source and Anti-Blogging?

Yesterday's launch of Open Source Media could have gone by with little comment from me except to congratulate a group of well known bloggers on attempting something like Philly Future, except far grander in scope and size (which helps when you have millions of dollars of financing and big names pushing it). Instead what I see is troubling and hopefully will change.

OSM.org mission, in its words is to: is to expand the influence of weblogs by finding and promoting the best of them, providing bloggers with a forum to meet and share resources, and the chance to join a for-profit network that will give them additional leverage to pursue knowledge wherever they may find it.

An admirable mission. One much like Philly Future's. I don't look at commercialization as a negative thing. We are part of an ad network for local Philadelphia advertisers. Among blogs in my personal aggregator are those from Weblogs Inc, Gawker Media, Metroblogging and Gothamist, and in two cases, Philly Future's. But there's much wrong with the implementation of this particular network so far.

To be included in our aggregator and be recognized as one of the best blogs in our region, we don't ask for bloggers to join an exclusive network. And their content belongs to them. Philly Future lays no claim to it. None whatsoever. See the disclaimers all over the site.

Content produced directly on Philly Future is under a Creative Commons license, meaning we retain the rights to that content, but give others the right to copy it under certain conditions - conditions we feel help grow the conversation. Which is the 'blogging way' really.

We produce RSS and encourage syndication. Again to grow the conversation. We have comments. Our site is a two-way street where you can converse back with the authors of it. In fact - YOU are the authors of it.

And we haven't named our site after a movement - a way of thinking about software licensing - that helped build the infrastructure of participation we are experiencing right now.

Open Source Media is none of those things. Take a look at its blogroll. A site that concerns itself primarily with political content and portends to bring you the best has no ScrappleFace and no Atrios. Why is that?

Take a look at its licensing, which has this frightening clause, which means I might get sued just for posting this: 2. Our Site and all its contents, which includes, but is not limited to, text, graphics, photographs, logos, video and audio content, is protected by copyright as a collective work or compilation under the copyright laws of the United States and other countries. All individual components of Our Site, including, without limitation, articles, content and other elements comprising Our Site are also copyrighted works. Additionally all of the weblogs linked to by us are likewise protected. You must abide by all additional copyright notices or restrictions contained on this site and our linked weblogs.

3. You may not reproduce, distribute, copy, publish, enter into any database, display, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any part of this site. The only exceptions to this are that you may download material from Our Site for your own personal use, provided such download is limited to making one machine readable copy and/or one print copy that limited to occasional articles of personal interest only. No other use of the content of Our Site is permitted. Please contact our Sales Department if you wish to have rights other than those stated above.

You can't get more anti-blogging then that. And finally take a look at its name. A hard look. The words "Open Source" have a long and storied history on the net (see Wikipedia). A history tied deeply with its roots and underpinnings. With blood on the wire. Folks like Philly's own Eric Steven Raymond worked hard to establish the meaning of those words - and the movement behind them (see this Wikipedia entry). So much so that organizations were launched to protect and preserve that movement, one of which being Eric's own Open Source Initiative. The Creative Commons licensing this site runs under was inspired by this movement, although they share no legal relationship (see CreativeCommons.org).

A radio program appropriated the term for its title a while back, also calling themselves "Open Source Media" for their show, they even trademarked it. Their producers are justifiably confused and concerned.

I'm not alone in scratching my head over the name. Check out what PunditGuy, Dennis The Peasant, Krempasky, USS Clueless, Dean's World (a OSM member!), Kos, Ann Althouse, Begging to Differ, The Talent Show, have to say, and far more - check out the growing list at Memeorandum. Finally see Blinq this morning for a good summary and BuzzMachine for more.

I hope that OSM takes off. Really I do. It would show, in a big way, just how ahead of our time this site, and the sites it was inspired by, were. More important - experimentation to find and establish sustainable citizen journalism models has to happen - and financing helps - but these things are more than just launching pains. A few searches on Google would have been enough to have had them non-issues. The confusing thing is why that was seemingly not done.

Update: Eric Steven Raymond shares his thoughts.

Update: It appears they have removed the copyright terms mentioned above from their public site.