The last SF Bike Coalition bulletin had tit-for-tat links to a an SF Chronicle article about how bicyclists are more often at fault for their own injuries and an op-ed response from the SF Bike Coalition. Reading them, I am reminded of the tensions that I myself have with auto drivers during my daily bike commutes.

From what I’ve experienced, these tensions tend to arise because bicyclists and drivers have different assumptions about what proper use of the road entails. For example, when I’m riding on a bike, it seems like common sense (i.e. when considering safety) that I don’t need to stop at stop signs if there is no cross traffic. On a bike, I can stop on a dime. I have more than 160 degrees of peripheral vision and unobstructed lines of sight and sound. I can tell if there is traffic is coming or not, and if there isn’t, there’s no common sense reason why I shouldn’t just keep riding.

Some drivers (a minority) seem to be angered by this. They will accelerate past me, getting real close (though still at a safe distance - one doesn’t have a very good sense of the space around your car, from the inside.) They will very occasionally honk or even roll windows down to yell at me. I just try to smile back. This one man even got angry enough that he ran into an intersection out of turn (at Sixth and Harrison) and ran into another car that had right of way. I did my best to suppress my schadenfreude on that one.

From what I can tell, this behavior comes from the driver’s thought of “Hey, I obey traffic laws, why shouldn’t bikers?” I understand this to some degree. If I ever get pulled over for running a stop sign on a bike, I won’t argue. I broke the law and I’ll take the ticket. In my opinion, though, the law should reflect common sense. I drive way less often than I bike, but even so, it’s clear that in my lifetime I’m much more likely to hurt someone while driving a car than while riding a bike. After all, traffic laws exist to regulate the flow of cars which are so often the source of injuries, whether or not bikes are involved.

In any case, this thought has been knocking around in my head for a while. Today’s articles finally prompted me to search around for what other people think. On the BCLU (Bicycle Civil Liberties Union) site, I hit the jackpot. That page has no less than sixteen well-reasoned arguments for why bicycles should operate under different traffic laws. The most interesting thing I read there, however, was the fact that Idaho and and Montana already have these common sense laws on the books. For example:

MOTOR VEHICLES CHAPTER 7 PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLES

49-720. STOPPING — TURN AND STOP SIGNALS.

(1) A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and, if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection. After slowing to a reasonable speed or stopping, the person shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another highway so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard during the time the person is moving across or within the intersection or junction of highways, except that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping.

(2) A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a steady red traffic-control signal shall stop before entering the intersection, except that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a right-hand turn without stopping or may cautiously make a left-hand turn onto a one-way highway without stopping.

Basically, bicycles are to treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs. Which, as it turns out, is already the social norm in San Francisco amongst bikers (and the way that I myself ride.) If only we could get this on the books, here, we could have a much better understanding between drivers and bicyclists, not to mention making roads safer and more efficient for everyone.

For those who missed this, last Friday, Lawrence Lessig has launched the beta of his Change Congress movement. It’s a broadly-named effort, but his strategies to reduce systematic corruption in government are highly targeted. On the politician’s side:

1. Create a series of voluntary pledges (e.g. support for a permanant ban on earmarks, no PAC money, etc.) any combination of which a politician could commit to.
2. Develop online tools to centrally track these explicit pledges, as well as pledges implied by the actions of other politicians.
3. Funnel national dollars into the local races of “early adopters” of the movement, allowing them to crush traditionally-funded opponents.
4. Leverage public and media interest into a self-sustaining movement over several election cycles, as Americans make this a campaign issue at every level of government.

The Change Congress movement also has several key components that allow individuals to express their collective power (i.e. grassroots organizing/crowdsourcing):

1. Let anyone with a website indicate their support for the various pledges with a badge on the website. These badges will not only be publicly visible (and clickable, for detailed information), but will contain code that indicates the website owner’s district. That information can then be aggregated via search engine, and representatives will soon be able to see how many public voices in their districts are asking for change, and of what kind. Mine is to the right.
2. Create a wiki-like web application for people to make calls, do research, and enrich the data about the activities of various politicians and their level of support for the Change Congress pledges. I’m looking forward to participating in this effort.
3. Allow individuals themselves to pledge financial support for candidates that support the pledges. I’ve pledged substantial amounts of money to the first five candidates who take a full, four-count pledge. You can, too.

Those who know me know that I believe that systematic corruption is the root of nearly all the problems with governance in our country (indeed, anywhere.) Lessig makes a good analogy: Like an alcoholic, there are many enormous problems that out government faces, all of which on their face would seem to be much more significant than the underlying pathology. An alcoholic may be losing his job, his family, and his life. But until the alcoholism is addressed, there’s only so much that the alcoholic can do to remedy his situation. I agree with Lessig that the same holds for our government’s dependence on special interests for campaign finance.

I’m no expert on this topic, but I’m pushing in the directions that have made themselves clear to me. Support for Barack Obama was one such push. Naturally, a movement coming from Lawrience Lessig (whose previous work with Creative Commons fostered a sea change in the debate over copyright reform) would end up being another push. I urge everyone to attack this problem in any way they know how. For now, these are mine.

Links:

• The Change Congress beta site. Make a pledge! Add a badge to your site!
• A video of the CC launch, in Lessig’s trademark slideshow style.

And, for a related treat, check out Lessig’s final lecture on the copyfight, in which he intricately weaves together the work of the last decade of his life, the work he hopes to do in his next decade, and how the defeats he suffered in the copyfight have helped him create the strategies of Creative Commons and Change Congress.

I first heard about Hasbro’s tight grip over IP surrounding the Scrabble board game about a year ago, when they sent Instructables a nastygram over this Instructable:

Well, they’re in the news once again as they’re now going after the immensely popular Scrabulous application on Facebook (the text of that nastygram is here.) I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that Hasbro has decent legal protection around Scrabble, including copyright and trademark, though its patent on part of the game board expired in 1970, which weakens its position somewhat. A fairly thorough treatment of Hasbro’s claims over Scrabble can be found here.

Many, many people (including me) are sad to see this happen. There’s even a Facebook Group now, where Scrabulous users are coordinating letter-writing campaigns to Hasbro. If it’s any reassurance, though, I think it’s possible that Scrabulous will be able to work out a deal with Hasbro. For Hasbro, the lawsuit may simply be negotiating leverage; if the law is on their side, then they’ll be able to take over Scrabulous and all of its users for a pittance.

So, we may have Scrabulous (or a similarly-branded app) for the years to come. It’s mostly sad for the developers of Scrabulous, who have put a lot of sweat into making it great (which, as a little web application, it really is great.) They’ve taken in some advertising revenue, but they’re likely to get raped in this deal. I do wonder on the other hand if some of their online innovations (keeping a particular letter selected on a blank tile, Facebook-specific features around inviting friends to play/chatting, etc.) could be protected. Can innovations in a derivative, infringing work still be copyrighted or patented? I hope those guys have some leverage…

In this case of the Scrabble Instructable (it was a way to print out a compact, travel-sized Scrabble game on a single sheet of paper), the author voluntarily removed the Instructable to avoid any trouble, so Hasbro’s claims weren’t tested.