By Stephen Downes
January 26, 2004
The Tyranny of Copyright?
This is
a great observation: "The recording industry is a $12
billion a year business, compared with the telephone
business, which is a more than $250 billion a year
business. That is what economists call a 'revealed
willingness to pay,' a clear preference for a technology
that allows you to participate in work, socializing and
interaction in general, over a technology that allows you
to be a passive consumer of a packaged good." This item
comes within the context of an article depicting (oh so
fairly, mind you) a copyright regime that is out of
control. Or let me put it another way: in order to protect
the $12 billion industry, legislators are in the process of
destroying the $250 billion industry. We must be free to
communicate, using words and ideas sometimes created by
others. That's what strong copyright protection destroys -
our ability to speak meaningfully. By Robert S. Boynton,
New York Times, January 25, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
memigo
From the site: "Memigo
recommends news articles you will be interested in based on
your ratings and those of other users that are similar to
you." This sort of thing will be huge. Forget peer review,
forget gateways. This is the future of online content
evaluation. By Various Authors, January, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Brewster Kahle on the Internet Archive and
People's Technology
This interview with Internet
Archive founder Brewster Kahle introduces readers to the
concept of "universal access to all human knowledge": "I
found that if you really actually come to understand that
statement, then that statement is possible; technologically
possible to take, say, all published materials -- all
books, music, video, software, web sites -- that it's
actually possible to have universal access to all of that.
Some for a fee, and some for free. I found that was a
life-changing event for me. That is just an inspiring goal.
It's the dream of the Greeks, which they embodied, with the
Egyptians, in the Library of Alexandria. The idea of having
all knowledge accessible." Yeah! By Lisa Rein, OpenP2P.com,
January 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
eLearnopedia
Three items from
Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) this week, all culled
from today's Academic ADL Co-Lab News Report. This first
item is a lot like OLDaily - a daily selection of links and
resources in the field of e-learning. The category tabs are
kind of neat, but will be less useful when there are
thousands of links. Because it's a relatively new site,
they are still linking to staples (last Thursday's link
consisted of 'Elearning Post', for example). The site needs
an RSS feed, of course. By Various Authors, ADL, January,
2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Learning Repository Community
wiki
Because this site is a Wiki, anybody could
may add to it. It's a good initiative, launched by ADL. The
site currently has some basic information about learning
object repositories and links to a number of resources. Papers and presentations from ADL's
Learning Repositories Summit, released in November, are
also available here. By Various Authors, ADL, January, 2003
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Repositories Listing
From the ADL
News Report: "The Academic ADL Co-Lab has released its
learning repository database. This database, designed for
those interested the internal policies of learning
repository projects themselves, allows investigators to
search for projects that use specific standards or have
stated policies concerning material submission and review."
The page will demand a login - ignore it; just click
'cancel' and continue on through. Or just go straight to
the Repositories Listing page. ADL has
another listing, in PDF, here. Word is that ADL is starting a new
project called CORDRA - the Content Object Repository
Discovery and Resolution Architecture. Nothing on the web,
though. I do hope they contact eduSource,
which is already well into work on a similar service. By
Various Authors, ADL, January, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
House Panel Sparks Database
Controversy
It's not law yet, but there is cause
for concern after a U.S. congressional committee expressed
approval for a bill that would, for the first time, allow
copyright protection over data. The arrangement of publicly
available information - names of people in alphabetical
order, for example - had traditionally been denied
protection because it represents no creative work. This
bill would allow that information to become private
property. By Roy Mark, InternetNews.Com, January 23, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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