Category: Mass Communication Law

Malamud’s list of 10 rules for radicals

10 Rules for Radicals: Lessons from rogue archivist Carl Malamud – Boing Boing

I can’t recommend this enough for anyone interested in Internet history, politics, hardware, or law.

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud’s 10 Rules for Radicals is the transcript of his keynote at the 19th World Wide Web Consortium conference in 2010. It’s a thrilling and often hilarious account of his adventures in liberating different kids of information and networks from various bureaucracies in his storied and exciting career. Malamud has instigated the liberation of American law, the Blue Book describing the workings of the telephone system, the EDGAR database, the video archives of the National Technical Information Service, and many others.

AT&T Weighs In

I couldn’t have said this any better myself.

Now that we’re going from wired to wireless, these same folks don’t want “the open Web” to happen to them again all over again. If they have to compete in an open marketplace, with the best applications and services on neutral ground, well, they’ll just be consigned, once again, to a commodity service layer with low margins. That’s their greatest nightmare.

Be sure to check out this short but insightful post: AT&T Weighs In: Trust Us, We Know What You Want – John Battelle’s Searchblog.

Could meaningful use be applied to FERPA?

One of the ongoing struggles of the educational technologist is dealing with FERPA law and instructor/student expectations.  Frequently an instructor will want to use a tool (hosted on campus or elsewhere) and want students to have access to the tool via automatic rostering.  Registrars can sometimes be hesitant to share this data.

The health sector is actually working on this problem. In an interesting post about the concept of “meaningful use” the author shows how restrictions on data might be loosened a bit to the benefit of everyone involved(Analysis: A defining moment for “meaningful use” – O’Reilly Radar). One example:

Another important relaxation is in the area of e-prescribing. This is the ability to electronically send an accurate and understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy.

By focusing on exactly how information might be used by stakeholders, rather than enforcing blanket restrictions, there may be some real gains in the quality of patient care. I think a similar concept for FERPA might have similar benefit.

Why is it so important that the public be able to put werewolves on T-shirts?

This Washington Post editorial attempts to answer this very question, regarding lawsuits over the use of copyrighted images in Twilight fan material. Following an apt quote from Tolkien, the author suggests:

Films such as the Twilight saga resonate because they show us complex characters grappling with big issues. …

Pictures, videos and slogans on T-shirts are tools of modern expression, and with a phenomenon as omnipresent as Twilight, fans should be free to engage, manipulate, remix and remake. Free speech is just too important for anything less.

Fans of any kind of cultural artifact, Twilight or otherwise, should agree with that.

via Washington Post – The Twilight copyright saga: Forbidden love and forbidden T-shirts.