Month: August 2006

This is another attempt to recover a deleted post and again I think this is an important issue.

I first encountered this issue when a blogger I follow complained that his work was appearing on a blog “syndicator” without permission. I use the term syndication as distinct from aggregation because aggregators (e.g., bloglines.com) typically provide the title and a few lines and then send you to the blog site if you find the topic to be of interest. Syndication appears to offer the reader the full post without moving you to the actual blog site. RSS feeds can be processed to mash together a site providing current posts from popular blogs, but this may not be what the individual bloggers intended.

The discussion that followed considered both legal and ethical issues in the world of bloggers (nice review). Some of the discussion was fairly nasty and focused on personal attacks concerning commercialism (Some bloggers use their sites to promote books, speaking services, etc. and not having visitors prevents them from displaying their promotional materials. However, the syndication sites may also attempt to generate revenue through paid google ad links.).

I think this is a situation in which the willingness of some to freely share their ideas has been abused. Contrived arguments that once something has been openly posted it is there for others to do with as they please seem self serving. Taking the words rather than taking the time to reference the ideas seems a form of laziness. Some may be attracted by the opportunity to contribute to a syndication site but to assume that this is the case is inappropriate.

One of the bigger educational tech stories of the past couple weeks (IMHO) is Blackboard’s attempt to patent the LMS. I am making the effort to attempt to remember what I wrote about this issue because I want to have these comments and links for future reference. There is a local connection in this topic for me. A group at my institution (UND) has been developing a commercial LMS (HTMLeZ) and this group like larger players (e.g., desire2learn) and open projects (moodle) now must wait to see how this plays out.

What makes the approval of a patent of this nature scary is that it covers so much ground and this space has already been populated by many companies offering similar products. It is unclear what if anything will be demanded of these other companies and how the general nature of the patent language will influence future developments in this area. It seems to me that attempting to claim a patent on a product that has already been made available by many companies and can be associated with existing categories of sofware (ILSs) is a high stakes move (note Blackboard acquired WebCT recently). Dominating this space would be very lucrative. However, there will be a backlash because of the many existing products and concern for continued efficient advances in products of this type. If the patent is interpreted in a way that allows for continued competition, the Blackboard name will likely be tarnished because of the claims the company has made.

Text of the patent

“The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for the exchange of information between instructors and students in an educational context. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods in which an educational instructor interacts with one or more non-collocated students by transmitting course lectures, textbooks, literature, and other course materials, receiving student questions and input, and conducting participatory class discussions using an electronic network such as the Internet and World Wide Web. The present invention also relates to the provision of an infrastructure that allows for on-line registration and tuition payment of educational courses.”
etc.

Blog post from elearning2.0 sharing the diagrams from the patent request.

You may notice the lack of posts since July 20 or so. You may also know that I have added a number of posts since then. For some reason, all of my posts disappeared from my database. Now you know just how frequently I backup. Maybe I made someone mad.

I resolve to backup more frequently.