By Stephen Downes
October 27, 2003
Cyberpiracy North of the Border
By
'north of the border' the myopic headline writer means
'Canada'. No matter. This interesting interview with
Michael Geist, the Canada research chair in Internet and
e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa. The interview
is mostly a pretty good summary of Canada's different
approach to copyright law than is found south of the
border. There's still a spin though. Geist asserts, for
example, that the law " ... lets Canadians make private
copies for noncommercial use... we justify the exemption by
way of a levy that applies to blank media such as blank CDs
and blank audio cassettes." Not so. We justify the
exemption by recognizing the individual's right to listen
to their won media. We pay for that exception via
the levy. Two different concepts, and it takes a certain
spun mind to see them as unified. What really comes out in
the interview, though, is the requirement that some sort of
due process be followed before any penalties can be applied
against alleged infringers. Important. Very important. By
Declan McCullagh, CNet News.com, September 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
DRM Companies Fund Felten's Attacks on
DRM
You just know this won't last. Ed Felten's
Freedom to Tinker weblog - which routinely rails against
digital rights management legislation and technologies - is
funded by Google Ads paid for by the very companies Felten
attacks. This is, of course, because the Google program
uses page content to select the ads to display. No doubt
these companies will soon be knocking at Google's door
demanding the advertiser's traditional right to be the
prime censor of commercial content in broadcast (or any
other) media. By Ernest Miller, The Importance Of, October
27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Connecting Learning Objects with RSS,
Trackback, and Weblogs
Macromedia Breeze
presentation of this now famous seminar. Well worth a look
(and it's interesting how popular Breeze is getting for
this sort of content - wish I could cut and paste from it;
it's really annoying having to type the content out). Worth
noting: I used the presentation slides (with full
attribution, of course) as a part of my NAWeb preconference
workshop on RSS and learning objects. This presentation
animates - in a way network diagrams cannot - just how
blogs, RSS and tackback combine to create a content
distribution network. By Alan Levine, Bran Lamb and D'Arcy
Norman, October 27, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Amazon's New Database Likely to Help Sales of
Some Works, May Undermine Others
That the
Author's Guild is protesting against comes as no real
surprise (certainly much less of a surprise than the
Guild's last tiff with the online bookstore, in which they
protested against the online sales of used books). The
Guild contends that "these publishers do not have the right
to participate in this program without their authors'
permission." Of course, the publishers' permission may not
be needed: Amazon is not providing access to the books,
only short excerpts. Sure, they search the whole text - but
there's no law against searching books. Yet. More coverage and a short review. By Unknown, The Author's
Guild, October 24, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The 300 Games Every Game Developer (and
Gamer) Should Know
OK, it's nowhere near 300
games. And it's just a list; there is no real discussion.
But the concept is worth a moment of your time, as it
stretches your mind a bit to think of the different
categories of games and of the unique properties possessed
by each different type of game. Just for fun, also add the
author's Talk Like a Gamer to your reading list.
By Greg Costikyan, Games * Design * Art * Culture, October
26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Click2learn and Docent Merger: Who Wins and
Loses?
It's pretty hard to make a gazelle out of
a greyhound and a rabbit, but Kevin kruse is willing to
offer advice along those lines as he considers the
implications of the Docent-Click2Learn merger. His advice:
cut staff right away, release a product roadmap within 90
days, and promise support for existing products. No doubt
the new company - which should (in my view) be named
Eckert&Oakes - will follow much this sort of plan. It's so
mainstream. But while companies are quick to say their
employees are their greatest asset, I always wonder why the
staff cuts are the first thing to do in a merger such as
this. Instead of cutting half the sales force, double the
sales capacity! Instead of trimming programmers, explore
new product lines and develop a new integrated LMS, and
make sure none of your customers lose. Yes, I know, the
market demands profitability within two quarters. But the
market is an idiot; stick with the business you know and
leave playing the markets to the professional gamblers. By
Kevin Kruse, e-Learning Guru, October 26, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Use of Stots TemplateMaster Woodworking Tool
Limited to One Shop
I would like to say that
this article demonstrates the absurity toward which our
copyright and patent regime is pushing us, but there are
many (including this company, obviously) who hail the new
world order. Where pricing and quality have failed to
produce customer loyalty, licensing agreements and the
weight of law will surely succeed! What bothers me most is
that it's so one-sided: any company can attach an end user
license agreement (EULA) to its product, but I have no
means of doing the same with the money I pay or the work I
perform on my job. How nice it would be to attach to my
money or my work a certain number of use conditions: "these
funds are not to be used for the purchase of non-open
software or services" or "this work is not to be used in
non-democratic nations." Why not? Let's use EULAs to
advance the cause of social justice, rather than as a
shortcut to unearned profits. By Ed Foster, GripeLog,
October 22, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Access to Italian legal literature:
Integration between Structured Repositories and Web
Documents
This paper can be tough going at
times, especially near the end as it discusses the
automated creation of metadata, but it provides a very nice
overview describing the preparation and delivery of Italian
legal information using a harvesting process. The model
described in the paper provides a unified view of both
dedicated databases and web content, and the provision of
metadata makes these materials easily imported into courses
or other larning resources. Some good diagrams. By E.
Francesconi and G. Peruginelli, 2003 Dublin Core
Conference, October 24, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Public Library of Science
This
editorial in a Philippines newspaper shows not only an
increasing awareness of open access journals in the
mainstream, it also highlights the importance of this
movement to the developing world. "Even the best-endowed
universities in the Philippines do not have all the
academic journals that their teachers and students need to
keep abreast of current work in their fields of interest.
The main reason is price." By Editorial, Manila Times,
October 25, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Hollywood Takes Anti-piracy Message to
School
More coverage of the MPAA's propaganda
campaign in the classroom. "The Motion Picture Association
of America paid $100,000 to deliver its anti-piracy message
to 900,000 students nationwide in grades 5-9 over the next
two years, according to Junior Achievement Inc., which is
implementing the program using volunteer teachers from the
business sector." This is overt politicization of the
classroom, a practice that should be resisted. At the very
least, there should be equal time given to the opposing
view. I would put together a program outlining the view
that copyright is theft and offer lessons in
the use of Kazaa, Gnutella, and system configuration for
the Peer Site network. By AP, San Jose
Mercury News, October 23, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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