Wednesday, November 16, 2005
 the ironies keep flying on the internets today:
The Talent Show today illustrates the idiocy of Pajamas Media changing their name to Open Source Media, and then being anything but Open Source: Pajamas Media has launched under a new moniker, Open Source Media, or in their officially-sanctioned shorthand OSM™. Yes, the trademark symbol is part of the abbreviation to remind people that they're not that "open source". And in case you get any funny ideas about freely distributing and modifying any of OSM™'s intellectual property, every page is accompanied by a copyright notice and a link to the privacy policy :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.
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. As a comparison, here's the notice at the bottom of DailyKos (who's notably absent from OSM™'s blogroll) : Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified. The jury may still be out on whether or not OSM™ is a thinly-disguised conservative blog circlejerk, one thing is already clear. They're not open source. I've always considered the intentional misuse of buzzwords to be a MSM™ phenomenon, but the guys in pajamas sure are quick learners.  but wait theres more, the original Open Source Media blogged this afternoon about the fact that indeed they own the rights to the name, that they've been around longer, and if you simply use a search engine when youre scouting out names you would have found them: So this morning I got an email from a listener with the following subject header:
"did someone steal your name?"
Hm. A company that used to call itself Pajamas Media now calls itself Open Source Media, which is — scroll down to our legal notice — kind of exactly what we call ourselves. They’ve collected $3.5 million in venture capital, and, to celebrate their re-naming of our already-named name, they’re holding an event at the Rainbow Room.
So what to do. A couple of blogs — Atrios, Stephen den Beste, Dennis the Peasant, Begging to Differ, Homocon — have picked up on this already, unprompted, perhaps because if you Google “open source media”, we’re the third result. Presumably the new “Open Source Media” Googled their new name before they settled on it?
Don’t get us wrong; we didn’t invent the idea of working with bloggers to make media, we certainly didn’t invent the concept “open source,” and there’s plenty of room for everyone to do what we’ve been doing. But they chose the same name that we established in May and, seeing as how we work in the same industry, people might find that a little confusing. And that has us puzzled. my advice to Pajamas Media, their blogger/writers, and their advisory board: cut and run, kids, cut and run.
Or you can ask your keynote speaker, Judy Miller, pictured, top, if she thinks this is something worth going to jail over.
Meanwhile: the Instapundit says he would have liked to have blogged from the OSM/Pajama Party launch - but it would have been too obvious. huh? one of the world's most popular bloggers was ashamed to blog from a launch of a new blogging venture because he would have come across as... a blogger? fascinating.
the KCSB Pledge Drive ends today - i donated, you should too + nay + amy
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