Like most of the blogoverse, I've consented to the unsatisfying and barely compensated practice of selling myself to Google Adsense on my hobby blog, which I should add is pointedly non-partisan.

I hardly monitor religiously the stuff Google pitches my paltry readership, but you get the occasional one that makes you scratch your head and flip back to the entry to figure out how it made the match.

Other times, there's less mystery than an episode of Columbo. Like when you post about an execution in Iran, and you get ...

Our friends at Politics and Technology ran a "punditology challenge" asking readers to pick the winners of all the January presidential primaries, Republican and Democratic alike.

The winners are here, (gosh, an A-list political blogger wins ... but it wasn't all favorites this weekend).

So, here's the bullet point for that wisdom-of-the-crowds slide you need to update with fresh data:

Our collective picks scored 117 points - and were better than 96.2% of the individual punditologists.

Out of 563 entrants, "collective picks" would have tied for 20th. We saw much the same thing (in a smaller sample) for last year's Oscar pool. (Dear readers, should we reprise this?)

At least the healing, back-to-fundraising process can begin in the bosom of YearlyKos, whose namesake shared these observations on FISA capitulation day:

We are a full-fledged partner in the progressive coalition ... with our allies in the labor movement, our friends in the issue groups, and our party leadership.

...

[E]arly hostility – based on substantive differences – is now giving way to new respect and trust.

We in the club, yo! What's systematic, institutional betrayal if not a call for more and better Democrats?

Someone could have dined well on my dime by wagering me on the proposition that this now-renowned "ObamaGirl" video would be -- well -- renowned.

I guess I'm a fogey. When I saw this thing Thursday morning it registered a big "meh." Three days later, the needle hasn't budged.

Actually, the citizen media that caught my eye that day came via the UK-based nfp2.0 blog -- a spot of guerrilla marketing.

[I know you want the SILF t-shirt]

This charismatic piece hit me as an interesting juxtaposition to last summer's viral-marketing Hindenberg, the Agency.com Subway pitch which went viral for its cover-your-eyes awfulness.

(All the original's video links seem to be pulled, but the below is the piece plus smartass subtitling.)

Despite my mixed reactions, and despite the contrasting purposes at play, there's a kinship between the first two of these videos that's wanting in the third. What is this quicksilver "genuineness" that decodes a piece's meaning and foretells its prospects as citizen media?

A number of DIA users and friends are among scores of signatories to open letters sent to both the DNC and RNC demanding that debate footage be openly licensed to facilitate remixing, mashups, parody, commentary, and every other manner of citizen intervention free from any possible fear that some intellectual property law could be used to shut down discussion.

The letters suggest one of two solutions: place all debate footage in the public domain; or, place it under a Creative Commons license. Here's a pdf version of the letters.

That's such a damnably obvious thing to get behind that kos and Michelle Malkin are taking the same tack. And while the danger of an actual lawsuit may be scant -- "suing the anonymous person who made a YouTube skewering you during the New Hampshire primary" is a good working definition of "political suicide" -- one has to appreciate the opportunism of using the situation as a teachable moment on intellectual property for politicos.

The parties should do this, of course. But so much the better if it normalizes in some small way the idea that statues surrounding content control and distribution are not fixed on Sinai but open to discussion.