DVD-copying Code Loses Free Speech Shield
I personally find this ruling odd. "Disclosure of this highly technical information adds nothing to the public debate over the use of encryption software or the DVD industry’s efforts to limit unauthorized copying of movies on DVDs," wrote the judges. Perhaps the judges weren't aware that this "highly technical information" was printed on t-shirts, turned into haiku, and otherwise widely integrated into cyber-lore. More...

MIT Everyware
This light read documents the impact of MITs Open CopurseWare project through the eyes of its users in the developing world. The 'Top 10' list of courses at the end of the article is fun. Leading the list? A philosophy course. More...

Hi-tech Tome Takes on Paperbacks
It's like this thing that never dies: the e-book returns with a new brand (Hewlett Packard) and a new sales pitch (it can hold a whole library) but it's still the same single-function device it always was. If you want to do anything with text other than read it, this device is not for you. More...

Free ride over for VoIP?
The state of Minnesota has ordered VoIP (Voice over IP) providers to file for a telephone operator's license in a move which, while it will be welcomed by telephone companies (facing devastation as their primary business disappears), seems otherwise inexplicable. Minnestoa is only the first of a number of states to make the move. More...

Microsoft Eats Crow to Protect Users
Even I feel something for Microsoft these days. As the article says, "the Lovsan, Sobig-F and Nachi worms that spread like wildfire this week showed that the hole left open in the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) protocol of Windows was big enough to drive a truckload of worms through." More importantly, the attacks have been devastating, bringing numerous enterprises (not to mention my own in-box, which is getting more than 1,000 SoBigs a day) to their knees. More...

Microsoft Sends OneNote to School
Odd. I haven't received mine yet (the constant barrage of criticism probably hasn't helped - heh). But Microsoft is giving away its note-taking software, one-note, to certain academic institutions. More...

A Second Proposal
Discussion has heated up again at Creative Commons as David Wiley has posted a second proposal for an education-only Creative Commons license (and also on his blog). I have stated my opposition to such a license - an opposition he doesn't want to consider - and I will state it again: such a license favour educational institutions at the expense of individual learners, such a license begs the question of how 'educational' is defined and who will define it, such a license opens the door to the pervasive monitoring of 'educational use', and such a license allows commercial publishers to push more legitimate open and free content from the marketplace by protecting the commercial sale of such content in other domains. More...

Sharing Leads to Abundance
"The days of knowledge hoarding are coming to an end." So begins this article by Don Tapscott and if we could only transfer this bit of insight from the corporate sphere to the commercial sphere society as a whole would be better off. But let's deal with the argument where it's based. More...

Open Access, Content, Publishing, Learning
Web Tools newsletter steps right up to the mark this week with coverage of open access content and publishing. The coverage begins, naturally, with Creative Commons but runs the gamut, beginning with a historical perspective (including some important work by Sam Williams and George Siemens) and looking at some major contemporary arguments. More...

Meaning, Use and Metadata
The only way you can be certain that a word has a given meaning is when the word is used in some context. The only way, therefore, to determine whether a learning object has anything to do with 'rabbits' is to determine that it was actually used in that context. More...