If the telecommunications industry had their way, there’d be no net neutrality. On that I think most people can agree.

If there is any doubt that net neutrality legislation is necessary, just be aware that the telecomms are very good at manipulating the system in their favor. Lessig has recently posted about some “sleazy stuff” going on with the DOJ and the SBC and Verizon merger. Meanwhile, somehow the Broadcast Flag issue has resurfaced this week. Public Knowledge explains,

Amidst all the Net Neutrality hubbub you might have missed the return of the Broadcast Flag, this time tucked into Senator Stevens’ 151 page telecommunications bill, S.2686. What’s an onerous copy protection scheme doing in the middle of a telecommunications bill? If you’re confused, you should be, it’s a tactic designed to sneak in a regulation that’s been repeatedly rejected by both Congress and the courts.

Isn’t it time to realize that the public will have to work harder to push through proactive legislation such as Net Neutrality? Consider the lessons of the DMCA and the more recent attempts at a Broadcast Flag. Corporations will try again, and again, and again to implement their vision for the Internet and intellectual property. We need to go on the offense with legislation that creates our vision instead of continually trying to defend againsts theirs. Otherwise, I fear the war will be lost and the Golden Age of the Internet will be over.

I know I’m being melodramatic, but we really needs some advances on our side instead of only being able to claim small victories when the other side has been stopped from advancing for a moment.

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This is big news. Previously, the NIH was directed to “recommend” that academics submit their publications resulting from NIH funding to public archives. However, looks like the House Appropriations Commitee is seeking to make mandatory that these publications be publicly accessible within one year of publication.

While this doesn’t directly affect our field (or anyone in the humanities) since we don’t get funding from the NIH, what it will do is ratify the idea at the federal level that scholarship produced by public funds should be publicly available:

“This action is a clear signal from Congressional leaders that they are committed to advancing the cause of science and the public interest,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an ATA founding member). “The bill is a significant step in acknowledging the profound impact the Internet has on the conduct of scientific research and the need for this research to be shared as widely as possible.”

Long term effects are that federal policy based on this ideology may get carried over into things like the NEH. Arguably, access to the product and study of our culture is as important as access to scientific reasearch.

And eventually this thinking should trickle down into the academy. It’s too hard to argue against this other than in logistical ways (e.g., fears that it will affect the economic feasibility of scholarly publishing).

So cross your fingers.

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June 15th 2006

LockLizard Protector has been specifically designed to stop elearning courses from being pirated.  It prevents unauthorized users from accessing course content, and controls what authorized users can do with it (copy, share, print for example) and for how long.

“Corporate e-learning is one of the fastest-growing sectors within the education market," says KPMG Consulting.  "Huge benefits will accrue when content flows seamlessly - often over mobile networks - throughout industry value chains." IDC forecast that the global e-learning market is worth some $23bn.  Gartner says: "The e-learning market is poised for explosive growth."

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Wired has two interesting articles up today: Breaking News from the Source and the really fabulous The Dead Formats Society. The first is a little blurb about a company trying to ensure that members of the AP collective get credit for their contributions, the idea being that surfers can be directed to the original source of the “breaking news.” The second is about the problem with ever-changing formats, and makes references to folks who I know are very near and dear to many fans of Kairosnews–Derrida being one. Who will be the Tolstoy of Flash, asks the author, knowing that the format may not be around in ten years (I’d say even five?). Indeed. What is art in the age of impermanence? As long as we’re dropping names, I’d like to have seen what Hume would’ve thought about this issue, since one of his main criteria for “taste” was that a work withstand the ravages of time.

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Product Marketing Manager at Google Jen Grant reports on O’Reilly’s recent study which claims that Google Books is helping to stimulate sales of O’Reilly texts. One would think this would be a no-brainer to publishers if they weren’t so caught up in elementary school child concepts of ownership: “It’s mine! You can’t play with it!”

Well, thank the FSM, here’s an mp3 player for the rest of us. These things are built to withstand the assaults of a fully functional 3 year old. For those who don’t know what havoc a 3 year old can wreak on a humble piece of electronic equipment–well, I suppose you’ll just have to ask Mr. Richter. (Anybody ever get a cheeseburger shoved in their VCR?) Anyway, what question being asked at Boing Boing about this player is whether it’ll come with Digital Restriction Management included. Wouldn’t it suck if you bought this for your kid and then ended up having to actually pay some jackass for “Frere Jacques”? But who am I kidding–they’ll hack the thing and be listening to Mobb Deep a few days later. It’s just a matter of chewing.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education actually has a good column on fair use entitled Digital Dissertation Dustup that looks at a dissertation which heavily uses traditionally copyrighted images and film clips as well as hypertext. I’ve cross-posted a longer entry on this at my blog, Techsophist. The situation in short was that Virginia Kuhn of University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s dissertation was in multimedia form, with generous use of clips and snips of different media, sometimes enbedded in other clips:

Although Ms. Kuhn lists detailed citations for all multimedia works in her thesis, she refused to ask permission to include them, because she insists that she should be able to cite them in the same way that print sources have long been cited. She says: “If you ask for permission, you’re screwed because you imply that you legally need it.”

Yes. Unfortunately there were some at the university that held up her dissertation’s approval fearing lawsuits from copyright holders. Later in the column (too much later) legal experts on copyright point out that what she did was clearly fair use and if challenged she would easily win. I concur with Kuhn’s stance and want to add that if we don’t avail ourselves of the fair use rights we have in academia, fair use will no longer be common use and research of any kind will become even more difficult and expensive than it already is.

The Chronicle of Higher Education actually has a good column on fair use entitled Digital Dissertation Dustup that looks at a dissertation which heavily uses traditionally copyrighted images and film clips as well as hypertext. I’ve cross-posted a longer entry on this at my blog, Techsophist. The situation in short was that Virginia Kuhn of University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s dissertation was in multimedia form, with generous use of clips and snips of different media, sometimes enbedded in other clips:

Although Ms. Kuhn lists detailed citations for all multimedia works in her thesis, she refused to ask permission to include them, because she insists that she should be able to cite them in the same way that print sources have long been cited. She says: “If you ask for permission, you’re screwed because you imply that you legally need it.”

Yes. Unfortunately there were some at the university that held up her dissertation’s approval fearing lawsuits from copyright holders. Later in the column (too much later) legal experts on copyright point out that what she did was clearly fair use and if challenged she would easily win. I concur with Kuhn’s stance and want to add that if we don’t avail ourselves of the fair use rights we have in academia, fair use will no longer be common use and research of any kind will become even more difficult and expensive than it already is.

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The Georgia Tech Library is running the following notice

Because of recent problems with systematic downloading of IEEE and ASCE journal articles that resulted in the suspension of our access, the Library has implemented downloading limits. We will continue to monitor this situation. Please note that downloading entire collections of data or entire issues of a journal or conference is a violation of copyright law and a violation of Georgia Tech’s licenses with publishers.

Yet another reason why we need open content. Subscription prices are rising at a rapid pace. Every university I’ve been at has sent out “surveys” to find out which journals we “really” need because costs are outstripping budgets. Now we get “downloading limits” with no specifics about those limits. What if I’m interested in an entire special issue? Do these “downloading limits” mean I can only see one article per day? Per week? Per month? Soon to come, printing limits, time limits on how long one can read an article–already in use via NetLibrary, and perhaps even citation limits. Digital collections are great, but not when they come with high prices and restrictions. It appears the Georgia Tech Library is only borrowing the journals.

The Georgia Tech Library is running the following notice

Because of recent problems with systematic downloading of IEEE and ASCE journal articles that resulted in the suspension of our access, the Library has implemented downloading limits. We will continue to monitor this situation. Please note that downloading entire collections of data or entire issues of a journal or conference is a violation of copyright law and a violation of Georgia Tech’s licenses with publishers.

Yet another reason why we need open content. Subscription prices are rising at a rapid pace. Every university I’ve been at has sent out “surveys” to find out which journals we “really” need because costs are outstripping budgets. Now we get “downloading limits” with no specifics about those limits. What if I’m interested in an entire special issue? Do these “downloading limits” mean I can only see one article per day? Per week? Per month? Soon to come, printing limits, time limits on how long one can read an article–already in use via NetLibrary, and perhaps even citation limits. Digital collections are great, but not when they come with high prices and restrictions. It appears the Georgia Tech Library is only borrowing the journals.

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When I first read about BlogBurst, it sounded like a great service for Kairosnews to be listed in:

BlogBurst is a syndication service that places your blog on top-tier online destinations. You get visibility, audience reach and traffic, while publishers weave the rich and diverse fabric of the blogosphere into their sites.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, that seemed to be the case until I got the invitation from them and went to verify Kairosnews. Their Contributor Agreement gives them substantial intellectual property rights:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, you grant to Pluck and its affiliates a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual license to reproduce, distribute, make derivative works of, perform, display, disclose, and otherwise dispose of the Work (and derivative works thereof) for any purpose, whether commercial or not.

Obviously, with Kairosnews, I couldn’t agree to this; I’m not the owner of all of the content here (nor would I if I was). Other bloggers beware. Make sure you read their agreement carefully before verifying your blog for them.

If this is true, I suspect we’ll hear more testimonials to this in the next week or so once the word gets around the Internet. MIT’s The Tech, a student run online newspaper, reports students who settle with the RIAA in file sharing suits are encouraged to leave school to pay their debts to the RIAA:

In fact, the RIAA has been known to suggest that students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford settlements.

Just makes the whole thing more disgusting, doesn’t it?

This might be old news, but definitely worth hearing. Last November, Mary-Beth Peters, the head of the US Copyright office, stated that

We’ve certainly lengthened the term [of copyright] perhaps — I won’t even say perhaps — too long a term. I think it is too long. I think that was probably a big mistake, but one that Congress can make. (via Boing Boing)

Too bad Lessig didn’t have one of those videos of her statement available during Eldred vs Ashcroft.