Reform Pittsburgh Now has a copyright notice on the bottom of its home page

I asked a question about the license for Bill Peduto's new site. He and the others didn't know. I invited him to the 4 pm talk I delivered on open source tools, data, and content. I think Bill had an appointment for a haircut. Does he really use the same barber as John Edwards?

Reform Pittsburgh Now Paid for by Reform Pittsburgh Now. Copyright (c) 2007 Reform Pittsburgh Now. All rights reserved.

Here is a blurb from the talk I gave at 4 pm.

Woody Guthrie including the following note in a 1930s songbook distributed to listeners who wanted the words to his recordings had the following message: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

It would be great if the new efforts of REFORM would be FREE.

Here is another example, also presented at the 4 pm talk to Pittsburgh PodCamp:

A journal was published with the following copyright statement: "All texts published in (this journal) may be freely reproduced, translated and edited, even without crediting the original source."

Bill, Justine, Justin, Matt and others. I'd love to have a "Podcast" via TalkShoe.com to talk with you all about the new site's license, copyrights and such. It would be best, in my not so humble opinion, to put the contents into the public domain.

I am not a lawyer (IANAL) and this is not legal advice. Furthermore, the contents of this blog posts are not intended to be legal advice nor should they be relied upon as or represented to be legal advice. CreativeCommons.org cannot and does not give legal advice. You need to assess the suitability of Creative Commons' tools for your particular situation, which may include obtaining appropriate legal advice from a licensed attorney. Yada, yada, yada.

Update:

The Pittsburgh Women's Blogging Society: Bill Peduto's Online PAC: "Today I attended the launch of Bill Peduto's online Political Action Committee at Podcamp. I think there were some mixed signals coming from the audience and the speakers (i.e. Bill & iJustine)."

I would never question anyone's experience. Getting new candidates and new helpers is very important. And, the new voices can be much better than the old. Rookie players are fine with me. My knocks go to other sources, such as Bill's statements.

Plus, the word was all about a lot of 'new faces' involved -- except for the campaign manager, Matt, and of course, Bill. So, the guys in charge are not new. They are veterans.

The saga has the same feel, for some strange reason, as the day Mayor Luke Ravenstahl announced the formation of the Pittsburgh Promise. Many in the room that day seemed to be impressed with the hype. The mainstream media was impressed with Luke's talking skills. My jaw was still on the floor.

Of course I want to be proven wrong. I want all the kids who graduate from Pgh Public Schools to have college tuition paid for -- starting with the seniors in high school today. Of course I want Santa to climb down from our roof and leave us presents on the night of Dec 24th too. But let's be real. The Pittsburgh Promise is nothing but a broken promise. We must stop the lies we deliver to our kids. They know better and they see it. And, when they can -- they leave. They don't want to live with false hopes. We need honesty.

If we need a fix on local issues without personality -- we can always turn to the Allegheny Institute -- and Jake, who should not be confused with Justine.