Lawrence Solum runs the Legal Theory Blog and recently wrote a piece on “Copynorms”, the “informal social attitudes about the rightness or wrongness of duplicating material that is copyrighted.” He describes a few scenarios that might come out of the recording industry’s pending lawsuits against filetraders, and what effect (if any) that will have on Copynorms.

A great new audio project worth highlighting is the Speech Accent Archive at George Mason University. It features 264 native and non-native speakers reading the same paragraph in english. Ever wonder what a Romanian from Bucharest sounds like in relation to a Boston accent? Look no further, as it is all released under a Creative Commons License.

This week we’re featuring the photography of Raymond A. vanderWoning. His photos feature subjects from flowers and bugs to signs and people and his about page carries a thoughtful piece on how and why he licenses all his photos. A hobbyist photographer at heart, Raymond’s closing statement gets to the heart of it all:

Information doesn’t want to be free, it wants to be shared.

Project Gramophone is a new project that aims to become a definitive source for early recordings that slipped into the public domain. The goals are similar to Project Gutenberg, but with audio instead of text. For now, the project features a mailing list open to anyone interested in contributing to the project.

So fair, so balanced, you’ll be sued into agreement.

Salon has two good stories this weekend on mash-ups (also known, across the pond, as “bastard pop”): 1, 2.

These older Salon stories on the same subject, from 2002 and 1998, provide a couple of nice reference points. If this is all just a trend, it’s a sure and steady one.

Read about Creative Commons’ plans to help make this sort of of culture legitimate, in the law’s eyes at least.

“Battle of the Blog” by Paul Festa

“Dean Flaunts His Internet Edge as Guest ‘Blogger’” by Jonathan Krim

“Saving the Net” by Doc Searls

“Harvard to House Blog Standards” by Crimson Staff