I'm not surprised. Cornell University along with the American Association of Publishers has developed a set of copyright guideline which states that the same fair use principles apply for electronic copies of documents placed in course management systems as do for print copies. In other words, it's not fair use to merely put electronic copies of texts in a password protected website. The copyright clearance center has a brochure outlining this new policy.

As I said, I'm not surprised. I predicted this in my dissertation, "The Future Is Open" for Composition Studies: A New Intellectual Property Model in the Digital Age. I've included the relevant text below for those that are interested:

In defining five basic changes to copyright law that the TEACH Act permits, Laura Gasaway suggests that

it removes the concept of the physical classroom and recognizes that a student should be able to access the digital content of the course wherever he or she has access to a computer. (82).

How exciting! I got a padded white envelope today with the RIAA logo on it, and it was not some kind of lawsuit notice. In it was the Protect Yourself. Do It Legally video and with two copies of their propaganda poster:

I have it hanging in my office and am still deciding what to draw on it :-)

Placeholder for publishing a version of my dissertation manuscript.

I just finished reading BusinessWeek Online's The MySpace Generation and realized I've not been paying attention to the large influence of social networks on Internet development. One need only read this one statement to realize their impact:

With 20 million of its members logging on in October, MySpace now draws so much traffic that it accounted for 10% of all advertisements viewed online in the month.

Imagine my surprise to find that thanks to MySpace and the @ Generation and their exposure to Internet advertising, anyone can embed a video in their webspace.

So while the RIAA goes after thousands of file traders on P2P networks, anyone can go over to VideoCodeZone and listen to over 20,000 music videos live on the web and even stream their favorites on their own site. Something doesn't quite make sense. Ironic, isn't it, that they are giving away music with the videos online. Who needs iTunes to listen to music on their computer?

Ars Technica notes that IBM, Sony, Philips, Novell, and Redhat have launched the Open Invention Network, a patent sharing company for Linux and Linux related applications:

The OIN patents are available, royalty-free, to anyone that agrees not to use Linux-related patents against other OIN participants. Any company that wishes to take advantage of the OIN patents would effectively have to make their own Linux-related intellectual properties available to the open source community. The OIN will stimulate Linux development and derail lawsuits that could potentially harm Linux and companies that rely upon Linux technologies.

I like the thinking here. It's very copyleft, very viral in a sense. So now those that work with Linux and release it have to share the code under the GPL and all other intellectual property rights. Meanwhile, it seems that this does not preclude the patent owners from blocking other non-Linux related applications from using their patents. Will patents given to and purchased by the Open Invention Network be permitted to be used royalty-free in all other open source applications? I would say that potentially, this is a very unique form of enclosure which preserves a specific public commons but could be exclusive of all other use.

VUB Brussels University Press have made How open is the future?
Economic, Social and Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free and Open Source Software (Marleen Wynants and Jan Cornelis, eds.) available for download under a Creative Commons license. It contains Tim O'Reilly's "Open Source Paradigm Shift", and I just read Ilkka Tuomi's "The Future of Open Source." Seems like a really good collection that I would buy if not for the fact that VUB has no US price listed for this edition and Amazon.com doesn't carry it.