Tag Archives: copyright

To Those Who Believe In Ideas

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Rest In Peace

Contrary to what many think – it is not action, it is not money, it is not the vote which makes this world a better place. It is the interchange of ideas, the free flow of ideas.

In light of the death of Aaron Schwartz, I’m glad others are looking deeply at the protectionist academic journal racket and JSTOR. My own captive mind post written a couple of years ago – throws my own voice and light onto this important issue and if I may be so dramatic, “clash of civilizations”.

It is saddening that nations, politicians, the world – can’t see the value in keeping ideas flowing. That it indeed will be the lifeblood of a better world. That so many more can have access to ideas and knowledge will bring unfathomable benefits and results to all of us.  Yet we have a closed academic society and culture. Yet we have an internet more and more walled in. Yet we have a communications network that is becoming mostly about who can pay.

Let’s open the ideas pipeline. Let’s make the internet free. It isn’t something that should have a toll booth where the rich can zoom through and pick at what they want, the poor get the garbage under the crowded roads beneath……

I was picking through a lot of my older posts about copyright, in the light of Aaron’s death. Came across this one – Cut, Snip, Paste.  At the bottom, came to this image, my former posting of a wonderful video about the power of remixing and how it breeds brillance. This image fell upon my eyes.

Let’s remember Aaron and work even harder to make the world’s ideas available for mixing and minds everywhere.

If you liked this post, see some of the others in the captive mind series.

 

 

Why the “gatekeeping”?

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Copyright and education – the necessity, the vital import of the free, unrestricted flow of information through the realm of education, has been a big concern and obsession of mine. See this post for some views, see my copyright tags, see my own “Captive Mind” series.

It is so important to not “possess” or appropriate ideas. However, our whole system is founded on the principle that some know and “own” this knowledge. The “neck up” types who’ve got to the sacred realm of the university towers.  They alone have ideas and all the rest of us just borrow them from these esteemed gentlemen.

Poppycock! It’s all about power. All a dice game. Read many of my posts, I won’t get into it here. What I do want to mention is a big peeve of my own.  I really get upset by how so many blogs, networks, communities ban/delete/prohibit/(choose your word) anyone who posts links.

You know that scene. You read a nice blog post. You want to post something you wrote or a link to something you are involved in. However, you hesitate, you know you’ll be blocked, banned or brushed up.   How  dare you try to help others by leaving a link!

This is the culture on so many sites/blogs. So proprietary. I’ve been deleted often, on many blogs in ELT that preport to be “open”.  All in the name of “keeping things on their own blog” and in essence, restricting the flow of information.  It stinks, I’m calling all this out.  It is as if they don’t think we are adults and can judge where information comes from and assess information in and of our own right. I say, “we don’t need any gatekeepers”.

On my own site, EFL Classroom, I’m always astounded by the emails I get from people asking to post a link, some information. I’m always flabberghasted – they are actually asking permission to post something informative on a social networking site? Go figure – that’s how much of a “walking on glass” mentality we’ve created with so much coveting and possessiveness in the realm.

I was recently interviewed by a student doing her Master’s. She was researching ELT blogs. She was so surprised when I mentioned that many ELT blogs were not open and were insular and all about their name and protecting their own – not really about open discourse and sharing – they don’t pass the litmus test of allowing members to post links in their comments.  She laughed when I related some stories about some ELT blogs – she said everyone else had told her we were one big happy family! I’m sorry but I got to call it as it is – there are too many protecting their own and not about information and sharing worthy things but all about building their name and presence. I say they have it backwards.

So to end this diatribe — please, please, please, post a link to your own blog, a link to any other information on the web – when you comment. As long as you aren’t spamming and copy/pasting on many blogs. It’s okay. We’ll all live. The world won’t stop……

 

 

The 4 Freedoms – Richard Stallman

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I’ve written quite a bit here about copyright and control of knowledge through larger entities. One place to start is my “Captive Mind” series.  My attempt to publish my own previously published work and to stop institutions from having for perpetuity, control over knowledge.

Finally, some good news on this front. Princeton University has brought down a ruling that forbids their professors to give away copyright of their research to publishers. HORRAH! They are stopping to feed these beasts that cage away knowledge for big money. This is just a sliver of the door opening but it is a start. A start at keeping knowledge accessible and more open.  Academic journals, with their monopoly over published academic work, have created a huge wall around information – valuable information. I call it “the captive mind” and we should encourage all professors to demand to keep control over their work and to be able to freely publish and share on the web.

Richard Stallman is one of my heroes. He’s not the most likeable guy but he’s really been a warrior on the issue of free use and copyright.  His 4 freedoms apply not just to software (his field, he’s the guy who created GNU and transformed operating systems with an alternative to the proprietary force that is Microsoft). They apply to all forms of knowledge and the way we can be “free” to share and adapt it.

Here, I’ve adapted his 4 freedoms for forms of knowledge: essays, research and print/video lectures.

1. The freedom to read the work or watch that work, for any purpose (freedom 0).
2. The freedom to see and study how the knowledge was assembled, and change it’s form so it becomes what
you “know”. (freedom 1). Access to the work is a precondition for this.
3. The freedom to share so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified works to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can
give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the original work is a
precondition for this.

Here he is at his best. He talks about how the freedoms apply to knowledge. A very valuable use of anyone’s time, to listen to his story and ideas….

Viva la (textbook) revolucion!

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revolution textbooksI’ve been, like I’m sure many other have, watching the ongoing events in the Middle East with sheer fascination. The power of normal people to say – “we aren’t going to take it anymore”. The invigorating energy given by technology to inform and empower the powerless. Havel would be so proud these days – something he always talked about.

But what about ELT – English Language Teaching? Has technology, crowd sharing, social media, the internet and connective technologies been liberating?

I’d say that it has but with a caution. There is so much more that could happen (and I believe will). There are still too many “landlords” and “fiefdoms” in our part of education. Still the propertied class that doesn’t pay its share and is concerned with feeding itself and not learning. Let me talk about one small piece of the pie – textbooks.

I’ve been bantering and chirping to myself on Jason Renshaw’s always stimulating and thoughtful blog. I recently stated something there that I’ve always wondered and really grind my teeth over – the fact that we teachers/students, the underclass, purchase materials in the billions of dollars. Paying for yachts and planes (and yes, there are a few in the ELT business that can afford their own planes and boats). We pay but we have zero control.

I mean, why can’t we use technology to edit the materials we have paid for?

Imagine a publisher that would give you a textbook all ready for you to edit and change, as you will. You could do so much;

* put in students names and photos
* record students and have their voices as listening material
* delete the stuff that you don’t want and will never do!
* substitute and replace material
* throw in links that would send students to websites where they can do self directed learning and get more input.
* add photos that are culturally relevant to the students.
* allow innovation and teachers / students into the creative process
* add your own idea… I could go on forever.

Here is Richard Baraniuk describing how this is very possible. See his Connexions for what he’s built for the university / academic world.

And why isn’t this done in ELT? Well basically, it is because of control and archaic protection of copyright laws. Inertia. The money is still rolling in.

It is similar to the remix debate in the music industry. And it suggests that learning is NOT important to publishers – what is important is control and the ability to forever come out with new, “improved” variants. For them to control the curriculum – to say it in a nutshell. (please watch Larry Lessig’s lecture for an esteemed academic’s taking of the same forthright position I am. )

You see, if they allowed you (after purchase) to edit a textbook – why would you ever need to buy another one? OMG! That would just destroy their planned obsolescent model.

Let me return to the point about the possibility that edited textbooks would have. (not to mention how up to date they’d be).

Here is the first page of a unit from Interchange 2. Here are my suggestions, imaging what I’d do if I could just click on the document, change and then print for my students (and oops! forgot to mention, how would they ever make money if we could just print as we wished!).

interchange change

I think we need a revolution in the ELT publishing and textbook industry. The people (students and teachers) need power and control. Teachers know best for their students. Teachers who design and create materials for their students (or even just adapt) are strong teachers. It informs them.

We need a wikipedia, Web 2.0, read/write revolution in the textbook world. My textbook out next week – Teach | Learn will be fully editable (and edible!). Viva La (textbook) Revolucion!

Food for Thought

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brain-food Recently, S. Korea announced that despite all the hostilities and tension with N. Korea, they would deliver food aid to the flood ravaged nation. (see AP article here.)

This got me thinking about my own views on food and then knowledge.

You see, I’ve always, always, always been adamant that food isn’t something one owns. It is to be shared and it is anyone’s right when at my house or in a restaurant, to share anything that is in my cupboard or on my plate. Food is sacred, life giving and not something to covet. It is the source of all our being and like one wouldn’t bottle and refuse air or oxygen to others in need – so to food.

Now I realize the practicalities and don’t take it to an extreme. “Need” is the definitive word here. Someone not hungry and who just wants to clean out my cupboard and resell my food – would get a swift kick. S.Korea is giving food aid because N.Korea needs it and that supercedes all else.

A brief aside. I remember once in Corsica, a very famous German politician came and visited us. We had an amazing evening of wine and food and conversation, laughter and music. The politician drank voluminously but finally, jet lagged and it being late, got up to go to his room. Dead drunk, he pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the table. Then, proceeded to go into the house where he fell upon the first visible “comfort” , a sofa and passed out. Hilarious but it solidifies the point that food is to be shared, it isn’t something just bought and sold.

What about knowledge? I truly believe that much of the bounty and abundance of modern society is because of the free and mostly unfettered flow of information. It is about access to the food of the brain – knowledge/information. Those that need – our students, the curious, the motivated and creative – they all should have access to it.

It is becoming abundantly clear that something is going and growing amiss. So many organization and individuals covet and commoditize knowledge. We put it into books beyond the access of many people. We take open source products and sell them, when it costs pennies (and I know about this – I offer free video conferencing and Learning management systems to schools or teachers and I am far from rich. But I find individuals selling these same products for hundreds of dollars / month!). Ads are with everything, even though cost is not prohibitive. Access is being charged to a higher and higher degree – in many cases, extravagantly almost to the point of usery. (one small beam of light, Tim Berners – Lee, one of the creators of the Internet, has called for FREE access for all). Why do so many go blind to this? As the internet consolidates, the walls ARE closing in and I think more educators should push back.

I won’t rant on. My post today is just to give everyone some food for thought. What about giving education a pass and letting students truly have full access to the world of knowledge. Allow teachers full reign to use knowledge and information in an educational setting?

Utopian? Yes. As Shelly said, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

The Captive Mind …..

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brainI grew up on a farm, always outside, always with dirt under my finger nails and a pulse that mistrusted intellectuals. Pencil pushers we called them. This despite the fact I always had my head in a book when time would be so kind, this despite my own “airs” and pseudo intellectual pretensions.

As I grew older, I realized a lot about the power of knowledge. Libraries were like my second home and I knew they were a portal to somewhere better, some place “more”. Gyorgy Faludy, one of my “book” mentors called libraries, “the headquarters of civilization”. He was right, they allowed any and all, free access to information and knowledge. They were the headlights of the enlightenment.

Civilization is a thin film. The heart of darkness is always encroaching. Progress, advancement, development, economic growth depends on greater and greater access to information, a wider dispersal of information. The cars we drive, the rockets we shoot into space – all this is because of the free and to a minimum, unfettered access to information and knowledge. Access to knowledge is so important for the health of this planet. It really is, I’m not over exaggerating.

Today, the internet holds the  potential to unleash a torrent of access to information. Free (or low cost) access to information for any and all.  However, we have a problem, some problems actually. Copyright, rising internet costs, declining standards of knowledge…..

The one I’d like to talk about however is access to higher knowledge. As a professor, I can go online and get any and all the  information I want. All the papers, references, reports I need. But what happens when I am no longer a professor (in a month this will be the case)? What happens is that the water hole dries up and I begin to die. Even some universities too are cutting back on access to academic journals because of cost. Talk about a train without any diesel!

Online academic libraries, Highbeam, Sage and the like, are like fortresses where academics hide and knowledge/light never seeps out.

Academics are captive minds. Servile, they sit in an old system of publishing while the  publishers make money off their “academic work”.  Charging heavy fees for access so that unless you are in “the boy’s club”, you won’t get this/that knowledge. You’ll be outside, looking in.  Even the authors who publish get ripped off – very few can afford to read their work. The only option is to go “trash time” and publish something sensational and non-academic.  The door is even tighter – once you publish, the publishers retain the rights and you can’t even put it online if you wanted to (or face the wrath of the “dream police”.).

Here’s what happened to Dana Boyd;

On one hand, I’m excited to announce that my article “Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck: Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence” has been published in Convergence 14(1) (special issue edited by Henry Jenkins and Mark Deuze). On the other hand, I’m deeply depressed because I know that most of you will never read it. It is not because you aren’t interested (although many of you might not be), but because Sage is one of those archaic academic publishers who had decided to lock down its authors and their content behind heavy iron walls. Even if you read an early draft of my article in essay form, you’ll probably never get to read the cleaned up version. Nor will you get to see the cool articles on alternate reality gaming, crowd-sourcing, convergent mobile media, and video game modding that are also in this issue. That’s super depressing. I agreed to publish my piece at Sage for complicated reasons, but…

I vow that this is the last article that I will publish to which the public cannot get access. I am boycotting locked-down journals and I’d like to ask other academics to do the same.  Continue and read her thoughts about this issue.

Here’s a nice practical description of the academic journal racket and the havoc it wreaks on the dispersion of knowledge/information.

This is not healthy, that’s not what makes for economic or social progress. The internet potentially allows for everyone to be able to access information and they should have that access. You might call that “entitlement” but I call it a human right. I want the most possible to read the most thoughts possible. It is this democratic demographics of discourse which we must aim for…. But it is hard to even talk about this sanely — people are making money off of this.

Google books has made some headway but in the area of academic research, it remains a wasteland and desert.

I’ve published and been read and then forgotten by 30 – 40 people.  Why bother anymore when I can post my research and papers online and have them read by thousands, even tens of thousands? So that’s what I’m going to do. No more sleepy book stuff. I’ll put it up and let everyone advance, not just the guys in the boy’s club or those who can pay Highbeam or whoever “x” dollars / article.  Let’s stop publishing and letting ourselves become “captive minds”.

I believe in a free mind, not that captive mind, the servile intellectual, as first described by Czeslaw Milos. Let’s all start having the courage to “walk the talk”. Go here to see the first of many articles I’ll be putting up for “public” and “profitable” reading….  Ecrasez l’infame was Voltaire’s battle cry for the enlightenment. Mine too.

Teachers selling their knowledge – A Parable

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There is a discussion within the online teaching community world wide because of THIS recent N.Y. Times article about teachers selling their lesson plans/materials and making $$$. May the Best Teacher Win is a great response and correctly suggests we are asking the wrong questions. If interested further – read all the varying viewpoints on The Teacher’s Leader Network.

I have some strong opinions about this. I’ll relate them another time. Today, I’d only like to share a story to illustrate my stance. Find the meaning yourself from this parable.
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Once upon a time, very recently, in the sub Sahara, there was a Tuareg tribesman of ambitious character.

He had been to the city and seen the shiny lights of Bamako. He’d spent lazy days along the banks of the mighty Niger.

In the city, this place of splendid future – he’d found on the banks of the river, the most miraculous of things – something called “a Playboy magazine”. Ah! What far away angels of beauty in that book! Women like honey! A piece of heaven on earth!

Soon his time in the city had run out. Alas, he was a trader, he had to keep moving.

So as he traveled, he’d approach the men in other caravans to share his wonderful “goods”. The first man he showed the pictures to asked him,
“How much?”
“What”, he replied. “What do you mean, how much?”.
The man retorted, “I’ll give you 5 francs for that one – that page!”. The man couldn’t believe his good fortune – people would actually pay for this!

The man traveled and sold his pages but as his book got smaller, he demanded a higher and higher price. Soon, he was selling quarter pictures of women, an arm or even just a leg sometimes for 10 francs! Of course faces were more, sometimes 40 francs.

One day, his book was empty. There were no more pictures to sell. He had to go back to Bamako to get another. So he did. And this time he learned of the photocopier and digital images. Also, the internet and password access. He set about creating an empire. Today, he has the largest house, on the highest and most prominent bank of the river Niger.

And in the evenings, far out in the desert, the dogs bark and the caravans pass. The men pour tea and laugh around their fires.