By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Paul Bacsich[Edit][Delete]: Alt talk to Blackboard's General Legal Council Matthew Small, ALT [Edit][Delete] August 31, 2006
Morten Flate Paulsen writes in, "Your blog readers, following the BlackBoard discussion, may be interested in reading my article Two Decades of Online Sustainability. The article describes NKI Distance Education's development and use of LMS systems from the early start in 1985."
The one-sided Associated Press article about the Blackboard lawsuit has hit mainstream with its belated publication USA Today.
Additional coverage is provided in CNet News.com, where executive editor Mike Yamamoto blames the government bureaucrats for the problem.
I guess the old saw about not talking about things that are pending before the courts doesn't apply to Blackboard. Good thing, because Matthew Small says a bunch of things that should be noted in this interview with Britain's Association for Learning Technology (ALT) ( via Leon Cych).
"Therefore prior art after 30/6/1998, i.e. 12 months before the provisional filing date, is not relevant.... It [Blackboard] sees the Wikipedia History of VLEs as a great compendium, but not as a threat....
"Blackboard cannot speculate as to what the DOJ considered in its review.... Nor is it the case that the first public mention by Blackboard of the patent was the issue of its 27 July press release. For example, Blackboard had already begun to mark its products as being patented, from earlier in 2006 (see for example the footer of the press release of 1 March 2006 ); and knowledge of the patent was 'out in the wild' several months before the press release, for example on a Moodle discussion board.
"I do not know the specifics of what Blackboard did for IMS in the late 1990s, but the inventions embodied in the patent were derived entirely by Blackboard inventors. The patent and the IMS work had nothing to do with one another. Did Blackboard notify IMS of its intention to make a patent application in 1999? I do not know. That would have been proprietary information, so I doubt it....
"We do not see this development as in any way 'game changing". We are not trying to put anyone out of business; reasonable royalties are all we want. We have a stated business policy of not going after individual universities, nor are we focusing on Open Source initiatives."
Eww. All slimy! I have to go wash my hands off now. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Greg Sandoval[Edit][Delete]: RIAA Copyright Education Contradictory, Critics Say, CNet News.Com [Edit][Delete]CNET News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet News.com [Edit][Delete]CNet news.Com [Edit][Delete] August 31, 2006
I like the way this one starts: "The music industry's educational video about copyright law is full of baloney, according to several trade and public interest groups." The point of the article is to highlight contradictions in the RIAA's campaign, which is essentially to make people think it's always wrong and illegal to download or copy a song. The problem is, this sentence is false, even you agree with the law as it is written. The RIAA declarations do not take into account personal use, educational use, and fair use. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Michael Geist[Edit][Delete]: 30 Days of DRM, August 31, 2006

I'm glad to have found this page, because I'm not going to run a Michael Geist link 30 days in a row, no matter how compelling the content (and this is pretty compelling). The 30 Days of DRM series is up to day 13 now. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. bleckb[Edit][Delete]: Worst Corporate Use of Email?, Kairosnews [Edit][Delete]KairosNews [Edit][Delete] August 31, 2006
OK, everybody is going to line up to slam Radio Shack for this one. Now I'm no fan of Radio Shack, and especially of the company's history of labour relations, but I have to ask this: in what sense is it better to be 'informed of a meeting with the general manager' on Friday to which 'all section Y employees must attend'? Hm? Does having the $1.5 million guy come down and give you the hatchet personally make up for that week of waiting and wondering while you slog away at your $5.50 job. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Leonard Low[Edit][Delete]: Find Out About Anything... Anywhere, Mobile Learning [Edit][Delete] August 30, 2006

It has been a while since one of my thoughts has been called "eerily prophetic..." - in this case, though, it's quite something to see one of my thoughts depicted in picture. "Perhaps one day," writes Leonard Low. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Robert Paterson[Edit][Delete]: Trusted Space - What I Think It Means, August 30, 2006
Sometimes, when I think back on my school days, I think of myself and my friends as having formed, at least for a time, some sort of fellowship as we trekked through common obstacles. Why have the 'teams' at work never felt like that? They don't really mean anything; "Groups are accidents of geography, of conception or of finances." This article explores the different ways people travel together. Maybe not the final word on the subject, but it should offer some insight into the complexities of collaboration and teams. Oh, and I cannot let this post go by without echoing quote from The Hero of a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell, 1949:
".....The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. 'Live,' Nietzsche says, 'as though the day were here.' It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Brian Lamb[Edit][Delete]: Grand Theft Education, Abject learning [Edit][Delete]Abject Learning [Edit][Delete] August 30, 2006
Brian Lamb posts the lion's share of a Harper's article on games and learning. Some interesting thoughts, and this caught my eye: "What we mean by literacy is changing. If you look at books like The Da Vinci Code, a lot of what it does is appropriation-of a painting, or a historical text-and annotation, with this whole cottage industry of providing the footnotes: the TV specials, the books". More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Garr Reynolds[Edit][Delete]: From Design to Meaning: a Whole New Way of Presenting?, Presentation Zen [Edit][Delete] August 30, 2006
I might have just noted and logged this item, as I would usually do, but it resonates so well with the article I wrote this morning I cannot let it pass by. More...

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Stephen Downes[Edit][Delete]: Things You Really Need to Learn, Half an Hour [Edit][Delete] August 30, 2006
Your school will try to teach you facts, which you'll need to pass the test but which are otherwise useless. In passing you may learn some useful skills, like literacy, which you should cultivate. But Guy Kawasaki is right in at least this: schools won't teach you the things you really need to learn in order to be successful, either in business (whether or not you choose to live life as a toady) or in life. Here, then, is my list. This is, in my view, what you need to learn in order to be successful. [Tags: Schools]. More...