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 […]
SOPA
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, […]
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 […]
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technology vendors (significantly including Microsoft and working through the Business Software Alliance) have either withdrawn support or […]
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 […]