OLDaily

Despite officials’ unwillingness to talk, students at The U got to the bottom of facial recognition technology on campus
Barbara Allen, Poynter, 2021/12/23

When the Dean called students into a meeting when none of them even knew who each other was, they realized something was amiss. “None of us knew each other; we all had masks on the whole time.” A year's worth of investigation later, student journalists uncovered the reality of the use of facial recognition technology at the University of Miami. University administrators were uncooperative, and the student had to work around them. It's not a good look, combining stealthy surveillance and its misuse to identify and call peaceful protesters to account. So what should the students investigate next? Perhaps they could find out why the the Charles Koch Foundation provided funding for this investigation, and what other sorts of things they fund.

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Open web group calls on CMA to 'freeze scene of the crime' of Google cookie phase-out
Bron Maher, PressGazette, 2021/12/23

It is noteworthy that on the other side of the debate publishers feel they have a right to track readers. A group called 'Movement for an Open Web' has "called on the Competition and Markets Authority 'to impose a formal restraining order' on Google over the tech giant’s plans to replace third-party cookies." Google's replacement for tracking cookies, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FloC) didn't fly, so currently there's no replacement. The argument against removing cookies is that it would give Google an unfair advantage. Fair enough. But I think the rest of us would propose to level the playibg field by eliminating tracking entirely.

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Paid podcast infrastructure sets the scene for 2022
Peter Houston, SpinyTrends, 2021/12/23

Companies like Spotify have been spending a lot of money to acquire free podcasting services and are moving forward with their plan to make paid podcasts the norm. "Previously, the potential for paid podcasts had been stymied by the ‘complexity’ involved in gating content on an open RSS feed." The trick is to put the payment part into the reader, and close off the feeds to everyone else. But this means eliminating the free competitors. "Having the ability to collect payments is not the same as having an audience that is willing to pay. A recent YouGov survey found that 83% of podcast listeners said they were ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ likely to pay to access podcasts." But they will if there's no other choice. And eliminating choice is what the commercial marketplace is all about.

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Open access is the future of academic research, says Wiley VP
Emily Bamforth, EdScoop, 2021/12/23

Maybe I'm too pessimistic about the Codecademy purchase? This article interviews a Wiley VP just a couple weeks after the company acquired pen-access research publisher Knowledge Unlatched. He's saying open access is the future, but I have to ask whether he believes it or whether this is just what you say when you've acquired an open access company. He makes it sound in this article like a transition to open access is a big complicated expensive transition. Maybe it is?

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Skillsoft Strikes $525 Million Deal to Acquire Ed-Tech Rival Codecademy
Ben Dummett, Wall Street Journal, 2021/12/23

Skillsoft, which filed for bankruptcy protection last year, has somehow found $525 million to buy Codecademy. Prosus, the largest shareholder in Skillsoft, also owns Stack Overflow. Taking on that much debt in order to acquire competitors that offer free learning resources probably means the end of those free learning resources. I feel the walls beginning to close around them. (Note: this article was available to me without a paywall, but with AI paywalls these days, who knows what you'll get, but I'm hoping for the best).

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What Should Students Pay for University Course Readings? An Empirical, Economic, and Legal Analysis
John Willinsky, Catherine Baron, Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2021/12/23

I was expecting the worst when I started to read this article, but the author's careful attention to detail, and especially care taken to consider the 'double charging' that would result were it not recognized that students are alreay paying a substantial proportion of author costs, leads to this surprise conclusion: "The three-step syllabus rule provides a sound rationale for charging each student $1.40 per year to cover royalty charges for readings assigned in Canadian university courses." Well done!

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