I have also had a little more experience with wikis since my original post, and would like to modify my thoughts regarding their use. Mainly, wikis work best when they create a resource for a group, rather than replace, supplant, or build off of existing resources.

That’s my experience with smaller (”We don’t do wikis because we have no control over them.” Control may be distracting, but its not a worthwhile objection. All but the most Enron of places want to leverage the skillsets of their employees. Sorry, that’s my attempt at corporatese. Anyway, once you frame social software in terms of knowledge management and project collaboration, the red herring of control dries up.

That’s a bit of a crow for me, but to be transparent my naïveté is due to the unquestioned commitment of my coworkers and managers to accurately capturing, understand, and wisely implementing business processes and requirements for IT initiatives. In my experience, the software we write is only as successful as the business process it embodies. When we are off the mark or the process is broken, our software is a mangled zombie corpse. When the process is good and our software captures that, it sings a sweet aria.

Towards reflecting the importance of correct understanding of the business of law firms, Adam Smith, Esq revises the list of top CIO traits to put understanding at priority #1.

To: CountyClerk@mail.hamiltontn.gov
CC: webmaster@mail.hamiltontn.gov
From: noel at weichbrodt dot org
Subject: Express Tag Renewal Center Online Accessibility

Clerk Knowles (and Webmaster),

I was shocked to find, upon attempting to access your online Express Tag Renewal Center (http://www.countyclerkanytime.com/onlinesvcs.htm), that you do not support standards-based web browsers (https://secure.hamiltontn.gov/cclerk/tags/browser.asp) like Firefox (http://www.getfirefox.com). I and many of my friends and family (all your constituents) only use web browsers that adhere to the formal standards of the web (http://webstandards.org/about/) and that offer full protection from various internet exploits and dangers (http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq.html#mozvsie). To not offer your services to us because of our choice is both a slight and a self-condemnation.

Upon examination of your county web site, it seems that it currently stands in violation of Section 508 (http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Content&ID=3), which mandates compliance with both web standards and disabled accessibility standards (http://webstandards.org/learn/faq/#p312). Though Section 508 is a Federal law, and thus does not directly apply to the County, as a government agency compliance with Section 508 demonstrates your concern for standards and accessibility, especially for your constituents who are disabled (http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/websites2.htm), also (http://www.alistapart.com/stories/politics/). Further, demanding the use of closed-source web browsers ignores the quantifiable superiority of other options (http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html).

There are a number of Chattanooga-based small businesses who are competent in the area of standards-based and accessibility-compliant web design (http://www.aiga50.org/cha/). I suggest that if your IT team does not agree with the industry standards and best practices in this area you avail yourself of their reasonably-priced services.

Please note that I will shortly discuss this issue, along with this letter, on my community blog (http://barelylegalsubstance.chattablogs.com). If you wish for further information regarding what I have mentioned above, or to discuss these matters, please contact me directly.

Thank you for your consideration.

Noel Weichbrodt

Background:
A city employee who wishes to remain anonymous recently wrote this on a Linux-related mailing list:

this sucks… the reason they wanted to know what sort of user-agent info is being sent from Safari is so that they could *allow* that browser to access the County Clerk tag & title website… [I] asked why the hell can’t I use Firefox anymore? Their reason:
Firefox is open source. A hacker could modifiy the code and post a hacked version of Firefox on the net. People download the hacked version of Firefox and it sends passwords and other sensitive information back to the hacker.
…the guy who made the policy to block Firefox [on the Express Tag Renewal Center] is one of the programming team managers here. the programmer said he wanted to block firefox, not because of security issues, but because he didn’t want to code his website to work with all possible browsers.

In light of what the city employee posted, my letter attempts to take the County’s elected officials to task. If you care about this sort of stuff, take a couple minutes and write to the addresses I noted above with your concerns.

This, while other counties are cutting costs and increasing performance by switching to free/open source software.

Update: Added links to the quoted URLs

Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted:
Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.
Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above:
These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned “benefit and use of the public”. As such, the DMCA’s use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.

Just an idea
I am awaiting a response from the LoC.
Found via Slashdot.

Thank you!

The following information was submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office at 17:35 on 11/3/05. Please print this page for your records.

[I have read the notice of inquiry and acknowledge that my attached submission will be posted on the Copyright Office website.]: Acknowledged

[Name]: Noel Weichbrodt

[Title]: Application Developer

[Organization]:

[Street Address]: The Volunteer Building

[Address Line 2]:

[City]: Chattanooga

[State]: TN

[ZIP]: 37402

[Phone]: 4237858262

[Fax]:

[Submitter's email]: nweichbrodt millermartin com

[Proposed class or classes of copyrighted work(s) to be exempted]: Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text.

[Brief summary of the argument(s) in support of the exemption proposed above]: These classes of works (Motion Pictures, Software, Audio Recordings, and Digital Text) have traditionally been granted copyrights for the purpose of encouraging the public dissemination of the works for the benefit and use of the public by providing a property incentive to the originator for a short period of time. The DMCA ignores this traditional cause of granting a copyright, and moreover establishes crippling restrictions on the aforementioned “benefit and use of the public”. As such, the DMCA’s use should be restricted to the text of the DMCA itself, with the consequence being that any private party which attempts to discern the workings of the DCMA with the intent to apply it in any broader fashion outside of the text of the Act itself would be committing a punishable, criminal action under the DMCA.

[Attached file]: ExceptionProposal.doc

Heck, the amount of paper consumed by law firms everywhere will drop by 75%, at least. In my mind, there’s the diminished, hoary, antediluvian lawyer who says to his young paralegal, “Do you know anything about this ‘Internet’, son? I heard Old Crotchitkins mention it to Knoobly-Knees at the [Ye Olde Closed-Membership] Clubb yester-evenin’. Said you could find out just about anything on it regarding my favorite pass-time of dominos. Also said that his son even found out the Anneballon’s secret mint julep recipe. I’ve been trying to get that out of that son-of-a-gun for years.” The bow-tied-one coughs. “Could you go and print out that ‘Internet’ for me so I can read up on it?”

But that just might be the last time that request is ever made. Strange to think that we might have to shift from dealing with an extreme lack of savvy to an extreme over-use of savvy, like those enterprising Stanford applicants who are now calling up their 2nd-tier schools. Just something to think about.

Lots of noise in the blogosphere about this, justly so IMHO.

Found via the Funky Presbyterian.

Further, you want to know why CC is important? It is making law via code.

Finally, I know you want to write all kinds of little graffiti on court cases. Open Source law is the idea. Now is your chance with the Legal Wiki Project. Try Grokster v. RIAA!

Bonus: is there any work on a wiki using OneNote-ish scribbling? I’m not talking about adding graffiti to existing sites, but about wiki software which explicitly enables that sort of thing. I sign into a wiki, and I can scribble on the pages. Call it the Child’s Playroom wiki.

No, I’m not paranoid. I just like to experiment.

There’s only two reasons I’m doing so. First, to protect myself from you if you go after me (which wasn’t what prompted this in the first place, btw). Second, to give me a legal basis for pursuing spammers (why I went a-huntin’ for TOS). Otherwise, you can chill. Get into the extended entry for more hot legalese action.

For those more paranoid, here are the parts regarding your privacy, what you cannot post, and who owns what you post. Basically, you have no privacy, you can’t post anything illegal, and I have the right to publish what you post under my Creative Commons license. Everything else is boilerplate.

Terms of Service

Welcome to Barely Legal Substance (the “Service”), the weblog of Noel Weichbrodt (the “Proprietor”). Your use of the Service is subject to these Terms of Service (“TOS”). The Proprietor reserves the right to update and change the TOS from time to time without notice or acceptance by you.

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2. Privacy Policy. None, obviously.

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Version 1.0.0

The trick this time is that the revision will undergo a revision a la Wikipedia; yours truly and others much more fully will revise, argue, battle, and agree their way to a wild working copy that Prof. Lessig will swoop down, snatch up in his legal talons, scrape away the obfuscations, and publish. Strange and neat, eh? Author, editor: meet your new maker: the Mobb.