life
Had a great copyright meeting yesterday at the Center, on the impact of copyright in education. Could probably have locked everyone in a room for a week and still not have had enough time to cover all the issues. Best question of the day, to me (summarized): are the various educational exceptions to copyright law applicable to a child’s homework? A child’s teacher can excerpt from CNN without substantial problem (at least under US copyright law), but it is unclear if the child can use the same excerpt in their homework. It gets less clear if they post that homework in a portfolio on the web. What if it then gets remixed into wikipedia? [Tangentially, would wikipedia’s copyright status be different if it were encyclopedia.harvard.edu? Should it be?]
Today I have a hiring interview for the scumware/spyware/adware project job– still plenty of time to apply if you haven’t yet.
reading
Have started reading Yochai Benkler’s Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials, which is excellent, if for no other reason than it contains an excellent definition of peer production- focused and succint, and yet sufficiently detailed.
Next up on the reading list is Beth Noveck’s ‘A Democracy Of Groups’.
politics
As usual, fafblog is the best place to go for all your torture related commentary needs. [fafblog: what would happen if Adult Swim were crossed with Daily Show.] [Which reminds me that I forgot to tape the first Boondocks. I suck.]