… In Hungary? Yeah I know, Ole Tux is just an OS. That is what I thought too. Still do by the way. But in Hungary a political party — Jobbik — has sprung up.:

We are going to implement open standards in the public sector and will promote the spread of open source solutions among the general public and among businesses. Under these directives, government and public sector documents can be stored only, in open document formats, on systems running open standards applications.

We are going to develop open standard interfaces, in order to encourage municipalities, the tax department, the banking sector and public offices to use open source solutions.

We are going to supply government funded and developed applications for municipalities, nation wide, to eliminate parallel and wasteful developments.

When both proprietary and open source software will be available with the equal functionality to accomplish a particular task, we will make the use of open source solutions, mandatory.

We are going to implement open standards in the school system and will introduce open source computing as a subject in schools, under the discipline of computer sciences.

That ladies and gentlemen is the Jobbik party platform. Sound wild? Well I will just direct you to Sweden where the Pirate Party has a foothold in Parliment after raising petitions and funds on the Pirate Bay file sharing suit. They now have over a dozen affiliated Pirate parties in the world. So it would not be far fetched at all.

Linky.

“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” - BB King

The internet has profoundly changed the world by making information, knowledge and media available to the masses. Those who made a  living by putting content into containers have been forced to adapt or go extinct. The business of music, movies, books, periodicals and news have been disrupted by the internet making what they formerly controlled access to open and massively available - often for free. That same paradigm shift has come to learning.

Online courses have been available for some time and most have become interactive. The last missing element between online and physical education has been performance measurement fine tuning individual learning. That may also be changing.

The most powerful feature of web-based instruction is that it allows us to embed assessment into every instructional activity and use the data from those embedded assessments to drive powerful feedback loops for continuous evaluation and improvement.  As we deliver the instruction, we use technology to collect real-time interaction level data of all student use. We use this data to create four positive feedback loops.

“Feedback” in this context is the information derived from student activities that is used to influence or modify further performance.

Feedback to Students

In the case of feedback to students, we refer to corrections, suggestions and cues that are tailored to the individual’s current performance and that encourage revision and refinement.  All OLI courses include frequent opportunities for students to assess their own learning and receive immediate context specific feedback. Fortunately, we benefit from inheriting some of the best work done in the area of online tutoring from Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh faculty.  This approach differs from traditional computer aided instruction in that traditional instruction gives didactic feedback to students on their final answers whereas the Cognitive Tutors and “mini-tutors” provide context specific assistance during the problem solving process. (Open Learning Initiative)

The Open Learning Initiative currently offers a limited range of subjects for free. It is just one of a many sites that offer coursework available online at no charge. Looking toward the near future, expect the college systems to evolve into a focus on evaluation and degree granting rather than teaching. Actually, recalling my student / instructor dynamic from two decades ago,  that’s been the gist of higher learning for some time.

A great many public libraries have been quietly extending their collections with downloadable ebooks and audio books “on loan”. You check them out with a download and when your time is up, they simply quit working. On the surface it looks like Sony’s pulled a real coup by partnering with the libraries first to help push its line of ebook readers.

That effort also continued today, with Sony saying that it’s teaming up with libraries to offer still more free books to its users.

For example, the New York Public Library (NYPL) will begin offering over 40,000 titles for free to those with Sony e-readers.

“Free is important,” said Paul LeClerc, the NYPL’s president and CEO, adding that “free” is part of the library’s mission.

In addition, library systems will enable Reader Digital Book owners to check out books from their local library without leaving their home, according to Sony’s Haber. Adobe Digital Rights Management technology (define) will ensure that the books expire on the e-reader after 21 days, he added.

Sony said it would be working with OverDrive, a firm that specializes in distributing e-books, to add free local library titles to the eBook Store by Sony — the company’s online book store. Users can locate their local libraries’ collections by entering their ZIP code into the new Library Finder application, also unveiled today, before downloading e-books using a valid library card. (Internet News)

I have little doubt this will help Sony, I see sel a few more readers, but there is  no reason why libraries would not also welcome a similar arrangement with Amazon, and their reader software works with anything that uses Windows.  While the cost of ebooks is a major obstacle to critical mass with publishers hesitant to price to far below print, the market for $3oo reader devices is limited. Critical mass for ebooks comes when best sellers go for a couple of bucks and a decent tablet / reader is $100. While the obstacles may remain in place for a while, the reality for publishers is that mass distribution of literature on dead trees  on life support.

CNN has been front and center among the bed wetting old media players whining about bloggers who “rip off their content”.  I suppose you can only rip off a story if you are a blogger - at least in CNN’s way of thinking.

If you’re a reader of Reason, you’re probably well aware of the massive amount of work that writer Radley Balko has put into investigating Steven Hayne, a controversial Mississippi medical examiner, whose testimony and autopsy practices were called into serious question by Balko’s research and reporting. Balko has spent years exposing Hayne (and some of his colleagues) for practices that, if true, are abhorrent. Balko’s investigative research and reporting has been instrumental in overturning questionable verdicts. If you’re looking into Steven Hayne, there’s simply no way you can avoid Balko’s reporting and research on the subject.

And, it appears that CNN didn’t avoid Balko’s research and reporting either, in its own reporting on Hayne, as a part of Anderson Cooper 360. Much of what was done by CNN appears to have come straight from Balko’s research — and sources quoted by CNN told Balko that CNN claims it found them via his articles. But, does CNN credit Balko for any of it? Nope. Not at all.

Because, you see, it’s only “ripping off” when it’s the “alternative media” properly citing the mainstream press… not when the mainstream press doesn’t credit the alternative media at all. (Techdirt)

There’s a special arrogance that seems to be present in the old world of big. Big media thinks it’s the exclusive owner of all news. It do not matter to big news  it is the first to report or not, if it’s news, it belongs to them. Or so the universal orthodoxy goes. We also find this attitude in big movies, big music, big business and big government. The problem with big is that when it reaches critical mass, the customer, end user or citizen is no longer served. Instead, the individual is expected to be the servant of big.  The problem with big news is that it is the official mouthpiece of big, and it’s time has passed.  The era of big has ended.

Microsoft has now filed a patent for a means of categorizing animal species. Yes you heard me. This is the kind of stuff that is giving IP a bad name. When there is nothing in the public square the ability to perform research of any sort will cease without first talking to a lawyer –

A Microsoft patent application has evolutionary biologists worried Redmond could claim standard techniques used by scientists to organize how animals are related through time.

The patent application, which came to light in the August edition of Science, claims invention of methods for mapping biological data to an evolutionary tree. It includes methods for counting evolutionary events as well as grouping evolutionary relatedness from biomolecules.

The patent application was filed July 23, 2007 and credited to Stuart Ozer.

“This patent is written in such a broad language that it appears to swallow up any activity that involves understanding biodiversity though phylogenetics,” said William Piel, a phylogeneticst at Yale University quoted in the article.

Linky.

In what I think the MPAA and RIAA industry insiders will regret, the cat kinda slipped out of the bag. The DRM mavens don’t think you should have forever use of your copyrighted works you paid for. –

“We reject the view,” he writes in a letter to the top legal advisor at the Copyright Office, “that copyright owners and their licensees are required to provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works. No other product or service providers are held to such lofty standards. No one expects computers or other electronics devices to work properly in perpetuity, and there is no reason that any particular mode of distributing copyrighted works should be required to do so.”

Now here is the sham of that argument. First of all I DO expect a motherboard on a computer to work for the lifecycle of the product. Which in most cases is not hard to see 10 years go by. (I have seen some, like a few Bell 3b2’s and PDP-8’s approaching 40yrs of life.) The problem for the MPAA/RIAA type is that they deal in expressions not a container. That is the essence of a copyright.

Why is that different? Well lets say you bought the cassette version of Neil Diamond’s ‘Stones’ album from back in the 70’s. Now lets say you did the same in 1995 because you wanted it in CD format and Wally World had in in the $2.99 bargain bin. The cassette and CD are different ‘containers’ but the expressions in form of music is the expression. So lets say your original version of the cassette wore out. So you copy the tracks off the CD to a new cassette. You’re covered right? Not in the eyes of the RIAA. They would say you infringed and should have bought a cassette version (good luck one has not been available for a decade.)

Here’s where the RIAA/MPAA argument falls apart. How would the RIAA sue you? They will make the argument in court you stole the expression that represents the content and denied the artist revenue. Yet they will for economic purposes maintain the container is the thing and is what they protect. Sorry you can’t have it both ways. Copyright is about the expression.

I would take one more step, vis a vis the hard goods comparison. Suits, you knew going in that this was the lay of the land legally in regards to content. If you don’t like those rules then find a new line of work more suited to the hard goods - patent mindset. Live with it.

Linky.

Some background: The Amazon terms of use say that the company grants Kindle users “the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy” of the e-books they purchase. The terms do not let you resell the e-books and limit their use to the individual who bought them. The terms say that Amazon can revoke access to an e-book without notice if you violate them but nowhere do the terms of use say that Amazon can delete e-books after you buy them. In spite of this, Amazon did delete e-books for what is arguably a good reason — it did not have the right to sell the e-books in the first place.

The underlying issue here is that Amazon, among many others, see the rules for digital as different than those for other things. It would never have crossed Amazon’s collective mind to grab a physical book from you if the company had shipped you one that it did not have the right to sell. But, maybe because it could, Amazon just did what it has the ability to do without thinking to see if the ability to do something automatically meant that it was the right thing to do.

Amazon is not alone in confusing the ability to do something with the idea that it is the right thing to do. It would be inconceivable that the U.S. Post Office would be required to make and save a record of who sent and received every letter it handled. Yet, just because it can be done, a number of law enforcement officials have called for laws that require ISPs to do just that with e-mail.

That ladies and gentlemen will be the bug-a-boo that will prevent eBooks from becoming a force in the marketplace. So long as the ability to delete material is in the control of others then quite honestly we are smack dab in the middle of page 103 of Fahrenheit 451.

Now I will grant that the commentary above is right on the money. But I have yet to hear any talking head breath the most obvious question of all — “How many other titles in their catalog does Amazon not have the right to sell to a customer?” A couple? Couple Hundred? Or is it more? Oh and many of those that Amazon thinks they don’t have a right to sell are actually in the public domain?

The electronic world is slowly strangling itself in rules that eventually the customer will just say, ‘To Hell with it’. When the customer no longer has any rights to the things they hear or see they will stop being interested.

Linky.

All I can say is just read the article. Realize that there are whole swaths of endeavor in this country in the same boat. Journalism as a content provider is the most vulnerable however. That is why Open Source Journalism will ultimately win out.

The free movement of information has only just begun to facilitate radical changes in the social order. It’s my opinion that we will see the end of academic elitist culture as we know it  in very short order. Case in point: In the past when a big discovery was made at an archaeological dig, it was immediately locked away from public view to be studied only by those elite enough in the pecking order to have the privilege. That’s changing. More of these finds are appearing online. One example is the Sinaiticus codex:

The 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus is put online after institutions in the UK, Germany, Egypt and Russia work together.

The Codex Sinaiticus was discovered in an old monastery in the Sinai desert in 1844, where it had lain for around 1,500 years. The sheer fact of its existence was surprise enough. But that was attributed to the dry desert air and the fact that the monastery itself had never been the site of any armed conflict. (Digital Trends)

With more people free to study and translate this text, it raises the bar for excellence. it will also re-define the qualifications for the the few remaining elites. Since the elites are losing control of access to knowledge, they will have to upgrade the quality of the knowledge they provide to stay a cut above the field.

The asshats at ASCAP are now making waves that ringtones are derivative works of commercial art and therefore due an payable. Why this is a scam after the jump –

Internet watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation has hit out at a US music royalties collector, accusing it of making “outlandish copyright claims” about mobile phone ringtones.

The American Society of Composer, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) filed a lawsuit against telecoms giant AT&T, in which it told a federal court that ringtones fell under the public perfomance Copyright Act.

ASCAP collects royalties and licences on behalf of 350,000 members in the US.

In effect, the organisation is gunning for additional payments from mobile firms, and if they don’t cough up the royalties ASCAP could claim copyright infringement against mobile users, according to the EFF.

The lobby group responded by filing an amicus brief* for the case earlier this week in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The brief, which was also joined by the Center for Democracy and Technology and Public Knowledge, urged the federal court to reject what the EFF described as “bogus copyright claims… that could raise costs for consumers, jeopardise consumer rights, and curtail new technological innovation”.

Here’s the clue this is a con job. The threat that ASCAP is throwing around is that they will go after the carriers customers. BUT, they won’t if the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Sprint pay up for them. This is the typical lawyer trick. Don’t go after the violator, go after the peripheral player in the affair that possess deep pockets. Always go after the deep pockets is the lawyers choice. That is the tip off this is a legal scam.

Linky.