Google CEO Eric Schmidt ascended to the Aspen Summit to discuss what freedom and openness means to his company and its customers.

Here’s the blow-by-blow so far:

2006: eBay owns PayPal. Google starts Google Checkout (June 2006). eBay bans Google Checkout (July 2006).

Longtime Hollywood insider and Variety editor in chief Peter Bart took on the blogosphere and the rights of bloggers with a decidedly negative take; a pair of movie bloggers took him to the editing room and trimmed him down to size.

Social networking sites are becoming a political lightning rod for politicians and law enforcement. As more children use the sites the belief is that they are at increased risk to be targeted by online predators.

If you are a startup entrepreneur, at some point, you will need to make a decision regarding your business model.  Many software startups have a strategy to build early market traction by giving away their offering for free with some plan to monetize at a later date.  I’m not going to make a strong argument against this.  So, for purposes of this article, lets assume for a moment that as a software startup, you actually *want* to charge money for your software someday. 

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Vodafone quietly disclosed they were working together with human rights organizations, investors and legal experts to develop a code of conduct for technology companies to help protect online free speech and privacy. The move is likely in response to proposed legislation that would be much more restrictive.

When going through the process of opening Socialtext, we need to choose a license that is a fit for a commercial open source company. Commercial open source strikes the balance between freedom and profit motive, and the license you choose becomes a contract not just for the company, but a community.

The Global Internet Freedom Task Force formed by the US State Department will focus on forming a foreign policy response to governmental threats to Internet freedom.

BBC News: Danish-Swedish dairy giant Arla Foods says the ongoing boycott of Danish products in the Middle East had so far cost it between 40m and 50m.

“How ya gonna keep em down on the farm After they’ve seen Paree”

The White House announced President George W. Bush will present Cerf and Robert Kahn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor.

At the AlwaysOn conference, Sun president Jonathan Schwartz says his company intends to make all of its software free.

Exciting news from New York City today as a new design for the city’s Freedom Tower, the successor to the demolished World Trade Center, was made public. For the patriot in all of us, it will stand at 1776 feet, making it the second tallest building in the world, and a symbol of American resolve.

Chinese users of MSN Spaces, a blog service available through MSH China, find certain terms rejected by the portal.