Author: john

Outsourcing fact-checking

The New Republic publishes this column on the derth of fact-checking in Journalism — perhaps in light of the controversy over PolitiFact’s “lie of the year.” The author makes an appealing triangulation between decreasing budgets, shrinking staff, and avoidance of “bias,” while connecting it to the rise of organizations like PolitiFact.

The appeal [of PolitiFact] is clear: it seeks to protect the reporters from charges of bias while giving the work of political judgment and analysis a scientific aura. And, let’s be honest, it also makes the job easier for reporters who can’t be bothered to learn enough about the facts of the matter at hand to judge the issue themselves.

Cuts in newsrooms and a desire not to appear biased have led to an outsourcing of fact-checking to PolitiFact. We need more news orgs doing this work, not fewer (and not just blogs).

via The Hard Truth About Fact-Checking | The New Republic.

Remix culture is the new Prohibition

“Waxy” makes some important connections between copyright and the habits of youth.  After pointing out the prevalence of (misguided?) “no copyright intended” messages on media sharing sites, the author poses the following “thought experiment:”

Here’s a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote.

What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe “I downloaded but didn’t share” will be the new “I smoked, but didn’t inhale.”)

This is why understanding the intersection of copyright, culture, and technology is not just a worthwhile pursuit — it should be a prerequisite for future policymaking.

via No Copyright Intended – Waxy.org.

FERPA Nuts

A short while ago, Georgia Tech announced that a 14 year long site hosting course wikis was being closed over FERPA concerns (this post on the story has a good quick overview of the law). The site had been around longer than Wikipedia. That’s what I call educational innovation!

A GT professor notes all of the great learning activities the wikis enabled, and ties it squarely to the idea of constructionism. As a space where knowledge is collectively built and refined, wikis are a natural fit for this teaching style. It’s an approach that I’m personally invested in supporting (I’m helping to build a tool here at UW to do it).

The point that interests me most is the tie between law and constructionism. While some might say that the shutdown happened because “it’s the law,” I would argue that this is oversimplifying complicated legislation. In fact, I would argue that unclear cases like this are really one institution’s interpretation of the law.

What’s the connection to constructionism? While the legal system is designed to work out ambiguity, it can’t scale to answer every single question under its domain. Its cases like this were we collectively determine the boundaries of the law based on our decisions. GT has made its choice in how to construct FERPA, but its far from decided law. I would argue there is space for balancing the intent of the law with what it is designed to protect — learners (who need to do their learning in a variety of ways).

More reading:

The EFF needs to adopt an open source model

Lessig’s analogy between legal and computer code is one that we should explore a little more deeply. We are caught in a seemingly intractable pull between digital modes of expression that push the boundaries of copyright, and a content industry (with government support) that pushes for even stronger copyright protection. If copyright were a computer program, we might call this a “bug.”

Other than the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has perhaps done the most to give “the public” a seat at the copyright law negotiating table (as the 1976 Copyright Act is continually being revised through legislation and Executive action). From the outside, however, the organization appears to be a bit “old school.” The model of donating money to fund lawyers to mount defenses and to argue at the copyright table, in my opinion has a limited value.  Additionally, the number of issues that the EFF involves themselves in (the list of their causes is here, on the right) perhaps waters down their ability to fight specific fights on the intellectual property front.

There are, however, a large number of people, lawyers, and scholars who are interested in each of these issues.  In many cases, their interest extends to expertise and perhaps passion about these issues. I see this as a great, untapped resource.

In my work with open source communities (most specifically, Drupal), I have seen how a hive mind can attack extremely complex and systemic problems. Often, only one or two people have a grasp on a full project. Yet, a large community is available to identify existing bugs, suggest (and debate!) how to fix them, and to actually do the work of making changes.

Copyright (in addition to all of the other issues the EFF is involved in) is a similarly complex problem, but perhaps one where more coordinated action might have more success in bringing true change to the law. To use another analogy, the “linux approach” to organizing multiple communities of interest to work together on individual issues might work better than the “microsoft approach” of unilaterally attempting to speak for the public interest.

As Litman said some years ago, “our copyright policy is becoming our information policy.” Something as important and complex as an information policy is worth distributing the workload on — and I think the EFF is a group with enough clout to make it happen. Funding lawyers for legal defenses is absolutely necessary, but the need for that defense will decrease if a coordinated public outcry succeeds in changing the law.