e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: SOPA

  • U.S. Copyright Infringement – U.S. Strikes in New Zealand

    On Friday January 20, two helicopters and “76 police staff, including armed offenders squad members” raided the home of Kim Dotcom north of Auckland, New Zealand. He was sought by the U.S. for copyright infringement and racketeering under an indictment from the U.S. District Court of Virginia, Eastern Division. Three associates were also arrested.

    The issues of whether links to documents can be copyright infringement, acts that preclude DMCA safe harbor, and barring legitimate users from their files may be resolved as two legal teams—the U.S. Department of Justice and a yet to be named legal team representing “the Mega Conspiracy” in the U.S.—clash in Virginia These are issues that will affect colleges and universities because of the similarity between these sites and the way some students use the Internet.

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  • The Tide is Turning – SOPA May Not Make It Out of Committee

    Over the past few days, there have been three significant developments that indicate the tide is turning on SOPA (and the Senate version, PIPA). As I have written previously, SOPA poses a threat to open education and educational technology in general, while most educational publishers are actively supporting this legislation. At the end of 2011, SOPA appeared to be likely to pass, with strong bipartisan support for the legislation. Since that time, there is a growing backlash, particular from technology companies as well as online communities such as Reddit. This backlash is having a real effect, and as of this weekend,  SOPA may not even make it out of the House Judiciary committee.

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  • Educational Publishers Appear to be Supporting SOPA

    UPDATE 12/23: Per the House Judiciary Committee, it is now confirmed that these companies are on the record supporting SOPA and the Protect IP companion legislation.

    Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee began the process of marking up the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill. From all appearances, most of the amendments have been rejected, thus leaving SOPA essentially in its original form. While passage is not assured, it is certainly a possibility as described by CNET.

    After a marathon debate on the Stop Online Piracy Act, it’s clear that the Hollywood-backed bill enjoys enthusiastic support among key members of the U.S. House of Representatives and is one step closer to becoming law.

    That became obvious after every legislative attempt to defang, rewrite, or significantly alter SOPA over nearly a 12-hour period today ended in victories for large copyright holders–and defeat upon defeat for the bill’s critics.

    While the SOPA impacts are not fully understood, there are some real dangers to educational usage that we need to follow. As described in my first post on the subject, SOPA could have a major impact on institutions using any form of educational technology to share content outside of a tightly-controlled password-protected course site. As we saw at EDUCAUSE this year, much of the potential of educational technology is to facilitate sharing of content outside of the traditional “walled gardens” of traditional LMS solutions, and enabling collaboration more broadly.

    This year’s EDUCAUSE keynote speaker, Seth Godin, has a post up at The Domino Project that calls out many of the list of “companies behind one of the lobbying groups pushing for SOPA”. On this list, lo and behold, we find most of the educational publishing companies.

    Pearson Education, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Macmillan, Scholastic, etc. They are all on the list.

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  • Regulatory Barriers to Innovation for Ed Tech and Open Education

    Over the past few weeks there has been a significant backlash growing against SOPA (the anti-piracy bills introduced in Congress) – read here or here for background.  The biggest change since the bills were introduced is that big technology vendors (significantly including Microsoft and working through the Business Software Alliance) have either withdrawn support or gotten off the fence.  The BSA is now officially lobbying against SOPA as written.  In the world of strange bedfellows, there are also a number of politicians on both sides of the aisle publicly opposing the bill.  It does take some real legislative talent to help create a Pelosi – Paul – Issa common cause.

    Despite the growing opposition, there certainly appears to be a concerted effort in Congress to get the bill passed.  The outcome is far from clear at this point.

    While SOPA by itself remains a major threat to innovation for educational technology and open education in general, it may be helpful to step back and see the growing list of federal laws and regulations that could have a major impact on innovation in higher education.  While each issue is interesting in and of itself, a pattern is emerging.  This pattern suggests that organizations interested in preserving the status quo – are actively pushing back against the tide of change brought by online systems, online education, and digital content.

  • How Georgia Tech Has Shown the Perils of SOPA

    This has been a tough week for open education, at least in higher education.  First came the news that Georgia Tech has taken down a 14-year-old student wiki site that allowed discussions and collaboration across courses and across semesters.  Next came the news of more details on proposed intellectual property laws in Congress, dubbed SOPA for Stop Online Piracy Act, that are being drafted in a draconian manner to protect content providers while taking away reasonable “safe harbor” protections for internet site operators.  Despite the nominal differences in these two pieces of legislation, I think that the Georgia Tech FERPA decision has shown just how dangerous SOPA could be to higher education.

    Ramblin Wreck

    The system under consideration at Georgia Tech was “Swikis”, a site that students used for their coursework and broader educational usage.  As described in the Chronicle, all it took was for one student to cause the institution to shut down the whole Swikis program, despite the fact that students choose how to participate.  The reason for Georgia Tech’s decision was their interpretation over violating FERPA regulations.  No ambiguity here, just a simple interpretation by the institution despite the fact that FERPA was written into law in 1974, well before we had an internet and collaborative online software.

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