Founding Mothers and Fathers

This July 4th Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales broke with the online encyclopedia's longstanding N.P.O.V. (no point of view) policy to announce in an "open letter to the blogosphere" the founding of campaigns wikia as an open-source alternative to election information provided by the mainstream media. Wikipedia is also in the news this week, because Voice of the Shuttle guru Alan Liu has posted a statement on "developing a wikipedia research policy" to aid students in properly acknowledging, citing, and contextualizing online sources.

There was more foundational rhetoric coming from across the Atlantic in France as the Pirate Party raised its skull-and-crossbones over the land of Liberté, Egalité, et Fraternité. It joins Pirate political organizations in Belgium, Sweden, England, and the U.S. Unlike the Green Party, founded on principles of self-sacrificing environmentalism, the Pirate Party may appeal to more unaffiliated voters in the electorate with its pro-creativity, anti-copyright message.

Speaking of piracy, there is a good parody of the piracy trailer on DVD's. (I, of course, love the fact that the MPAA chose the same cheesy typeface that we did for our custom-published "Laws and Orders" Humanities Core Course reader and writing handbook.) You can check out the prankster's site for more information about contests they are holding to encourage more subversive digital submissions. According to the Seattle Times, a study from the online research group Big Champagne indicates that file-sharing is bigger than ever, so aye matey it won't be long before we're all talking like pirates.