From Lessig's political "spam" message about the new p2p-politics site that is leveraging archive.org to provide an open source for political ads:

One out of four American adults have rated a product, service or person using online reputation systems, according to this new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. And that's not counting the under 18-year-olds!

Advokit is an open-source grassroots-network voter-file campaign-management tool developed by veterans of the Dean primary campaign and available either as a hosted (ASP) service or as a stand-alone install.

The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) began from "a proposal to develop a pilot project in one county in California" and has spawned the voter verifiable, open-source
Electronic Voting Machine project:

If you can get the Real Audio link to work, you can hear an interview I just did with public radio's "Future Tense" program on my Nation article on open-source politics. Mary Hodder says she heard me on KALW in San Francisco today, so the piece is out there.

One of the things I said, which I hope didn't end up on the cutting room floor, is that I'm hoping to participate in an open-source style discussion of just what open-source politics might look like.

The Heritage Society's Press Room policy weblog cites the new weblog of Mark Tapscott, the director of Heritage's Center for Media and Public Policy at Heritage, called Copy Desk, and and notes that his first entry speculates about whether the blogosphere will transform government in the same way it has challenged the mainstream media (also known as the MSM in blogger, especially right-wing blogger, circles).

His opinion on this matter is fairly straightforward:

My answer is an enthusiastic yes and my purpose with this blog is to do whatever I can to encourage this revolutionary process forward.

The Berkman Society at Harvard is focusing its Internet + Society conference in December on politics and technology (Is the Internet Still on the Political Fringe?). Looks like PDF editor David Weinberger is speaking there, so maybe he can tell us more about the event. Wish I could make it, but I'm hoping there'll be good online coverage.

Unfortunately, Harvard restricts access to its students during class hours, so attendees at the "Votes, Bits and Bytes" conference won't have wifi until Saturday's sessions. But, if you ask the conference organizers nicely, they'll give you a pass. So here I am, sitting in the august Ames Courtroom at Harvard Law School, listening to Hossein Derakhshan (Hoder, a leading Iranian blogger) give a fascinating talk about the role of blogs in his home country (he lives in Toronto).

Blogs in Iran, he says, function as a) windows into and outside a closed culture; b) bridges, between men and women, older and younger generations, and voters and politicians; and c) as cafes, where people can talk to each other outside of the government controlled media.

Before him, Pippa Norris of Harvard University gave a talk about the limited impact of e-voting in England (details on her blog). And Tom Sander reported on his research into Meetup attendees.

Scott Heiferman, the CEO of Meetup (and a member of PDF's advisory board, I should add), just gave a terrific keynote address on the future of connected politics. Here's his vision: We're going from flash mobs and bricks-and-mortar organizations to flash, emergent, people-powered, long-lasting, open, influential, agile, chapter-based, institutions/organizations/unions that have card-carrying members and meet regularly face-to-face to act on common concerns. He called this the "Napsterization of organization." (I told Mary Hodder, sitting to my right, that she should ask for a fee--she grinned and said she'd take a nickel.)

We need a "Constitution-wizard," he said, in other words tools that help people create such new kinds of powerful federations. One step in that direction is going to come from Meetup, which starting next week, Heiferman announced, will allow all the members of a Meetup category group (Pug owners, Townhall.com fans, knitters, or the fastest growing Meetup category of stay-at-home-mom's) to talk to members of the same group, worldwide.

Quoting from Supreme Court to Look at File Sharing (washingtonpost.com):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Friday it will consider whether Internet file-sharing services are responsible for their customers illegally swapping songs and movies, a multibillion-dollar case testing the limits of copyright law in the digital age.

Justices will hear a challenge to a lower court ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. that was a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the online distribution of their copyrighted works.

In the realm of technological innovation, the usual political alliances and bedfellows don't necessarily apply. While the libertarianesque Silicon Valley capitalists haven't yet established a coherent political presence as a faction of either party, it will be interesting to see whether Web-facilitated political activism brings about some pressure towards open-source ideals and reconceptions of intellectual property. Even if so, the effect on the judiciary would take a generation or so to ripple through, so it's probably too soon to expect radical reevaluation of such matters from the Supreme Court.