Stephen's Web

OLDaily

by Stephen Downes
April 7, 2008

Illegal Class Notes
Several people have written about this, a ridiculous case where a publisher is suing the students of a professor for circulating class notes, arguing that this would irreparably damage sales of the materials it publishes by the professor. Stahmer asks, "I wonder how many original ideas are in the professor's lectures and how many he's adapted from others. Doesn't he owe them some of the royalties?" And David Wiley writes, "Moulton created a variety of (we assume high quality) teaching materials, and then Faulkner somehow snookers him into signing over all the copyrights in his work to them. So that Faulkner can sue people and say 'we nobly defend the rights of professors.' Nope - thanks to you, the professor has no more copyrights in his work. Shame, shame, shame." Wiley has more here. Tim Stahmer, Assorted Stuff, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Books, Open Content, Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

The International Whisper Campaign Against Fair Use
The actual article under discussion is a bit complex, full of legalese and treaty negotiations, but the gist is this: there is a deliberate and orchestrated campaign to misrepresent the concept of 'fair use' as in violation of the latest round of international copyright negotiations (WIPO), a campaign that would eventually eliminate fair use provisions from national copyright laws. Michael Geist calls this "swiftboating fair use." Michael Masnick, TechDirt, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Copyrights, Patents] [Comment]

Increasing Access to OA Material Through Metadata Aggregation
Discussion of a way to increase access to research material through the use of a standardized profile for metadata aggregation. Useful not only because of the discussion of the concepts but also because of the descriptions of a couple of Canadian initiatives, the Alouette portal, including West Beyond the West, and the CARL harvester run by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries. PDF presentation; the HTML launch page is here. Via Gavin Baker. Mark Jordan, E-LIS, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Portals, Canada, Research, Open Access, Metadata] [Comment]

How to Build the Mesh - #2: Persistent, Ubiquitous Content
This is a follow-up to number 1, where he talks about personal identity and OpenID. In part two, he channels a list of popuar Web 2.0 applications into yet another version of the PLE diagram. He does not call it the PLE, he calls it "Persistent ubiquitous content." He writes, "If you step back and think about content as infrastructure you can take a different attitude towards stock photos, soundtracks and beats, 3D models, 3D city models and all sorts of reusable digital content assets. You can bake historical references, sports statistics, background on diseases and weather trends into your blog posts and software. You can make collaborative hypermedia a dream come true." Marc Canter, Marc's Voice, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Ubiquitous Internet, Web 2.0, OpenID, Web Logs] [Comment]

Google Spreadsheet As Virtual World
Interesting article that makes the point. If you try Google Spreadsheets with a friend you'll see what the author means. The service is a controlled multi-user environment withimultaneous usage by multiple persons, presence indicators, real-time text chat and unique, mobile avatars. Via Bryan Alexander, who adds, "There are many ways for Google Earth to combine with other tools to form virtual worlds. And that could be huge, when it starts happening." Tony Walsh, Clickable Culture, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Chatrooms, Google] [Comment]

List of Web Applications That Use Google Gears
Google is creating the software that is creating the websites that are creating the new web. Based on a PC World article about Gears. Alex Chitu, Google Operating System, April 7, 2008 [Link] [Tags: Google] [Comment]

This newsletter is sent only at the request of subscribers. If you would like to unsubscribe, Click here.

Know a friend who might enjoy this newsletter? Feel free to forward OLDaily to your colleagues. If you received this issue from a friend and would like a free subscription of your own, you can join our mailing list. Click here to subscribe.