etc@bmc
Thursday, May 31, 2007
My Panel on Blogging at FA 2007
The podcast of my panel with Angela Gossetti-Murrayjohn and Sue Fernsebner on blogging in the classroom is up. While you're there explore the other podcasts and pictures and resources.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Click and Double-Click Episode 13: Faculty Academy at UMW
I had the great pleasure of talking to some of the organizers and participants of this year's Faculty Academy. Because of a software crash, I lost the conversation with two of the guest speakers, Barbara Ganley and Alan Levine. I left Alan's hello in just to prove he really was there. I'm hoping he'll come back again as a guest to talk about the NMC and Second Life. The show is broken into roughly two parts. In the first part, Mark Colvson and I talk to Jeff McClurken, professor of History and American Studies at UMW about his presentation and his general involvement in Faculty Academy. We also discuss Karen Stephenson's amazing keynote presentation on networks within organizations. Stephenson was a Hepburn Center fellow and presented some of the work she did with Bryn Mawr students. In the second part, I got together with Martha Burtis, Acting Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, Gardner Campbell, professor of English, Jerry Slezak, Acting Assistant Direct of DTLT, and Jeff McClurken to talk more. Interesting conversations all the way around. Enjoy.
FA-07 (m4a file with chapter markers)
FA-07 (mp3 file)
FA-07 (m4a file with chapter markers)
FA-07 (mp3 file)
Tags:
Slow Blogging
Barbara Ganley has posted a version of her talk from Faculty Academy. It's well worth a look. Video and audio coming soon.
Tags:
Monday, May 21, 2007
Tablet PCs gaining in popularity
According to Ars Technica, Tablet PCs are finally gaining traction. Dell has announced it will come out with a tablet later this year, and there's an aftermarket Mac tablet coming out this summer (supposedly).
Tags:
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Post Faculty Academy Skype Extravaganza
I just couldn't let FA go, so I invited some of the people who made the whole thing possible to join me in a conference call to talk about the event, its history and future, and some of the issues that were raised by many of the presenters. We'll be hearing from Martha Burtis, Gardner Campbell, Steve Greenlaw, Jim Groom, Alan Levine, and Jeff McClurken (and maybe more). Assuming all the technology comes together, we'll be broadcasting live at 11 a.m. Tuesday, May 23rd. Regardless, we'll definitely have a podcast of the session up soon.
Rumor has it that there will be podcasts or screencasts or something of the presentations themselves, so I will point to those when they're available as well as make my own M*A*S*H*U*Ptm of them.
Rumor has it that there will be podcasts or screencasts or something of the presentations themselves, so I will point to those when they're available as well as make my own M*A*S*H*U*Ptm of them.
Tags:
Monday, May 14, 2007
Faculty Academy at University of Mary Washington
This week, I'm delighted to be included in the program at the Faculty Academy at the University of Mary Washington. Along with two other humanities faculty from UMW, I will be talking about using blogs in my recent CSEM courses. I'm looking forward to hearing what my two co-presenters have to say about their experiences and to hear discussion from the audience about blogging and teaching.
Generally, the sessions are podcast or screencast afterwards, so all of you not attending will be able to reap some of the benefits nonetheless. Many of the sessions look really interesting and I hope to gain some useful knowledge as well as inspiration.
Tags:
Generally, the sessions are podcast or screencast afterwards, so all of you not attending will be able to reap some of the benefits nonetheless. Many of the sessions look really interesting and I hope to gain some useful knowledge as well as inspiration.
Tags:
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Copyright and Fair Use on NPR
An interesting report on fair use, including a guy who says fair use should be restricted.
Tags:
Tags:
Friday, May 04, 2007
A small clarification
A small clarification about my last post. In talking to a certain computer scientist I know, I learned that I misspoke just a bit in terms of what the key released via the Internet actually does. As I understand it (and a more technical person than myself should feel free to correct me), the key circulating around the Internet over the last week or so is a key that allows hardware, coupled with appropriate software to play on machines not officially "authorized" to play hd-dvd's. When one plays a dvd or hd-dvd, the machine one plays it one actually decrypts it as it plays. It's a complex system, explained fairly well in this wikipedia article. The way we usually make clips is to play a dvd in a dvd player that is connected via firewire to a computer. In theory, a player could be made so that the signal gets scrambled and therefore wouldn't be copyable on the computer. Or, the software used to make the copies could be made to refuse to play dvds that are encrypted.
At a lower level, dvds can be copied whole hog, that is simply duplicated and the bit level (the 1s and 0s). There are some measures in place to prevent even this from happening, but those are more difficult to make unhackable. Generally speaking, pirates are making duplicates of dvds and reselling them. The protections that the powers that be have been trying to put in place are an attempt to prevent this kind of copying and the kind of copying described above (playing and recording), but it's at two different layers. Most of the protections so far have not made it harder for pirates to do what they do and may possibly make it harder for us to do what we do.
At a lower level, dvds can be copied whole hog, that is simply duplicated and the bit level (the 1s and 0s). There are some measures in place to prevent even this from happening, but those are more difficult to make unhackable. Generally speaking, pirates are making duplicates of dvds and reselling them. The protections that the powers that be have been trying to put in place are an attempt to prevent this kind of copying and the kind of copying described above (playing and recording), but it's at two different layers. Most of the protections so far have not made it harder for pirates to do what they do and may possibly make it harder for us to do what we do.
Tags:
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Copy protection, web 2.0, and education
The story I'm about to discuss may not seem like it's relevant to education, but it is, extraordinarily so. But it wouldn't seem like it to the average person. For the last few days, I've been watching the Internet buzz with excitement as a 32 digit number was published on a wide variety of blogs and forums. The excitement was fueled by the purpose of this number. It's a code that coupled with the ride software can decrypt the new hd dvd format. I first saw mention of the number on Monday. On Tuesday morning, when I opened my news reader, which automatically collects news related to copyright and the dmca among other topics, the number was everywhere! The number had been revealed months ago in various forums, but the increased interest was spawned by the AACS-LA's own takedown notice to Google that had posted the number which contained the number itself in the url. People thought that was funny and so started posting about it and posting the number more widely. The site that was serving as a conduit for many of these postings, Digg.com, received as many 15,000 "diggs" for sites containing the number until they themselves received a request to prevent the sites from showing up on their site. (Digg is simply a site that recommends other sites through a user recommendation system; it's very popular.) At first, the Digg administrators tried to take down all references to sites containing the number, but they couldn't keep up with the posts. Eventually, an angry internet mob basically shut the site down, and digg eventually capitulated and allowed the sites to stand, not just giving up, but actually siding with their users and opening themselves up for a lawsuit. The whole story made it to the mainstream news this morning.
There are two reasons I find this story interesting for educators. First, it's a story about Web 2.0 on a couple of levels. For me, following the story and trying to find out historical information about the code, I had to rely on Web 2.0 sources--blogs, forums, and the like. This is not a story that usually shows up in the mainstream media. By digging around--using Google and Technorati, I was able to find ample information on all sides of the issue. The only semi-mainstream source I could find was a Wired magazine blog. One of the most informative sites I found in my search was Ed Felten's blog. Ed Felten is no random blogger, but a computer science professor at Princeton who specialized in security issues. His was a name I'd heard and so I knew the information on his blog would be credible. Finding the information was a lesson in the power of Web 2.0 sources, but also in vetting those sources. A good deal of what I found was just regular people ranting about the movie industry and such, a useful indicator of the general cultural moment, but not informative.
The other Web 2.0 story had to do with the users of Digg getting their way. Not everyone saw this as a democratic success story. And it's not the first time users on the web have had a tangible effect on an issue.
The second reason the story is interesting is because of the decryption issue itself. Posting the code is illegal as it violates the part of the DMCA that prohibits making public circumvention tools. The EFF explains the legal issues clearly in this statement. Unlike CDs, which can be easily ripped and imported into music players, DVDs have long been encoded and encrypted in a way that makes it impossible for people to simply pop the DVD into their computers and make a copy of it. The current DVD format's code was cracked back in 2000 with similar results to the current hacking incident (we have the t-shirt as proof). From a very strict interpretation of the DMCA, the way that most professors were obtaining film clips was technically illegal since it involved circumventing the copy protection on the DVDs (and VHS tapes) from which the clips were taken. Earlier this year, however, the copyright office made an exception for film studies professors, making it legal for them to circumvent protections in order to make clips as long as they followed fair use guidelines. Still, strictly speaking, anyone outside of the film studies discipline is still breaking the law if they circumvent these protections.
Why should we care about this code and this incident? Well, if you're a professor and you need a film clip for teaching or research purposes that comes from an hd-dvd, you might need that code just to get the clip, just to do your job. As formats change, the copy protection changes, which increases the chance that the current equipment we have may not have the ability to make the clips we need. There's a lot of pressure on computer manufacturers, software manufacturers, and video equipment makers to make sure their products will protect the content being played on them or through them from being copied. If we, as educators, don't remind lawmakers that we're legally allowed to work with this material for educational purposes, the market may eventually evolve in a way where it's actually impossible for us to do so. And then, we may be cruising around on the darknet to find these codes and the technical means to break copyright, behaving like criminals in order to uphold our rights.
There are two reasons I find this story interesting for educators. First, it's a story about Web 2.0 on a couple of levels. For me, following the story and trying to find out historical information about the code, I had to rely on Web 2.0 sources--blogs, forums, and the like. This is not a story that usually shows up in the mainstream media. By digging around--using Google and Technorati, I was able to find ample information on all sides of the issue. The only semi-mainstream source I could find was a Wired magazine blog. One of the most informative sites I found in my search was Ed Felten's blog. Ed Felten is no random blogger, but a computer science professor at Princeton who specialized in security issues. His was a name I'd heard and so I knew the information on his blog would be credible. Finding the information was a lesson in the power of Web 2.0 sources, but also in vetting those sources. A good deal of what I found was just regular people ranting about the movie industry and such, a useful indicator of the general cultural moment, but not informative.
The other Web 2.0 story had to do with the users of Digg getting their way. Not everyone saw this as a democratic success story. And it's not the first time users on the web have had a tangible effect on an issue.
The second reason the story is interesting is because of the decryption issue itself. Posting the code is illegal as it violates the part of the DMCA that prohibits making public circumvention tools. The EFF explains the legal issues clearly in this statement. Unlike CDs, which can be easily ripped and imported into music players, DVDs have long been encoded and encrypted in a way that makes it impossible for people to simply pop the DVD into their computers and make a copy of it. The current DVD format's code was cracked back in 2000 with similar results to the current hacking incident (we have the t-shirt as proof). From a very strict interpretation of the DMCA, the way that most professors were obtaining film clips was technically illegal since it involved circumventing the copy protection on the DVDs (and VHS tapes) from which the clips were taken. Earlier this year, however, the copyright office made an exception for film studies professors, making it legal for them to circumvent protections in order to make clips as long as they followed fair use guidelines. Still, strictly speaking, anyone outside of the film studies discipline is still breaking the law if they circumvent these protections.
Why should we care about this code and this incident? Well, if you're a professor and you need a film clip for teaching or research purposes that comes from an hd-dvd, you might need that code just to get the clip, just to do your job. As formats change, the copy protection changes, which increases the chance that the current equipment we have may not have the ability to make the clips we need. There's a lot of pressure on computer manufacturers, software manufacturers, and video equipment makers to make sure their products will protect the content being played on them or through them from being copied. If we, as educators, don't remind lawmakers that we're legally allowed to work with this material for educational purposes, the market may eventually evolve in a way where it's actually impossible for us to do so. And then, we may be cruising around on the darknet to find these codes and the technical means to break copyright, behaving like criminals in order to uphold our rights.
Tags:
