Why is UIUC supporting Blackboard?

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An excellent framing of the debate around challenging Blackboard’s patent (local copies of the news announcement, patent re-examination request, and USPTO’s order for re-examination) which stifles educational software.

Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:27:28 -0600
From: Nathan Owens
To: cio@uiuc.edu
CC: provost@uiuc.edu
Subject: unethical practices by Blackboard

Dear CIO Kaufman,

A copy of this e-mail is being sent to the Provost.

I am writing to express my displeasure with UIUC’s support for Blackboard, the company from which UIUC purchases the software and services that run Illinois Compass.

As you may know, in 2006 Blackboard was granted a patent giving them exclusive rights over certain Internet-based educational support systems and methods. These methods include previously implemented and rather obvious procedures which allow students and teachers to communicate electronically. As such, Blackboard has little or no basis for holding their patent, and it is currently being challenged. Nevertheless, they have recently shown their willingness to defend that patent with a lawsuit against another educational company.

Few would disagree that student-teacher communication, regardless of the medium over which it is conducted, is a fundamental aspect of education. It therefore causes me some displeasure to know that by buying their products and services, UIUC has facilitated Blackboard’s financial capacity to proceed with an aggressive, antisocial, and ultimately destructive lawsuit. I strongly urge that both you and the University rethink your support for a company whose practices are so antithetical to the University’s mission.

Respectfully,
Nathan Owens
PhD candidate in French Linguistics

Update 2007-02-05: The University’s CIO replied.
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Verizon and Google: abusing their power

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BoingBoing has the scoop:

Viacom did a general search on YouTube for any term related to any of its shows, and then spammed YouTube with 100,000 DMCA take-down notices alleging that all of these clips infringed its copyright and demanding that they be censored off the Internet. YouTube made thousands of clips vanish, and sent warning notices to the people who’d posted them, warning them that they were now on a list of potential copyright infringers and telling them that repeat offenses could lead to having their accounts terminated.

This is shockingly bad behaviour on the part of both Viacom and Google, YouTube’s owner.

US Government distributes PDF of 9/11 report with DRM

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The 9/11 report is a US government work and therefore is uncopyrighted. It was born into the public domain and should remain there forever. You may deal in the document fully without any restriction due to copyright law.

Some bloggers (Techliberation.com, BoingBoing.net) noticed that the 9/11 report distributed from 9-11commission.gov has Digital Restrictions Management applied—copying a snippet of the report is disallowed in certain PDF readers (such as the Apple and Adobe proprietary PDF readers). Of course, you shouldn’t install proprietary software on your computer; you would use KPDF or some other free software PDF reader. KPDF lets you turn off the DRM in the application preferences, so you can read, print, and copy any part of any PDF document without hassle. It’s not hard to find or make an unencumbered copy of the report without DRM.

Whether the DRM can be circumvented (technically or legally) is a secondary issue here. DRM is inherently a bad idea and we don’t need it, corporate copyright holders have been arguing for it and are trying to convince you that you should want it too. Part of their argument tries to get you to see the world in the most restrictive way: any restriction we can technically impose on others is virtually self-justifying and hardly needs any debate. That state of affairs should not be seen as unavoidable, acceptable, or the default.

Did your proprietor pay the patent bill?

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Bizjournals.com reports that

Alcatel-Lucent told a jury it is owed almost $2 billion for Microsoft Corp.’s use of the standard technology for playing music and audio files on a computer…If Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent wins, the way could be cleared for legal actions against the many other companies that rely on MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 technology, commonly called MP3.

To me, the important thing here isn’t whether Alcatel-Lucent wins or loses, it’s primarily that software patents exist, and as a more minor procedural matter that patent license fees can go unpaid without users knowing anything about the lack of payment until it’s too late. If you use Microsoft Windows (any version since Microsoft Windows 95), MacOS X, or most portable digital audio players, you have an MP3 player, perhaps also an MP3 encoder. MP3, unlike Ogg Vorbis which””functionally””does the same thing, is patent-encumbered. Had distributors focused on Ogg Vorbis, millions of users wouldn’t be in the situation they’re in right now, not knowing whether the proper patent fees have been paid.

As we know from Paul Heckel’s patent threat against Apple, patent holders can come after users too””you don’t need to distribute anything to infringe upon a patent. In the 1990′s, Heckel had a patent which does something so obscurely described in his patent application I can’t summarize it for you here. His lawyers told him that Apple’s Hypercard program was doing something that infringed upon his patent. So Heckel went to Apple and said as much. Apple wasn’t very impressed with this, so Heckel threatened Apple’s users. On page 109 of Richard Stallman’s book of collected essays (“Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman“) you’ll find a quote from his talk about software patents:

For instance, Paul Heckel””when Apple wasn’t very scared of his threats””threatened to start suing Apple’s customers. Apple found that very scary. They figured they couldn’t afford to have their customers being sued like that, even if they would ultimately win. So the users can get sued too, either as a way of attacking a developer or just as a way to squeeze money out of them on their own or to cause mayhem. All software developers and users are vulnerable.

Perhaps this case will serve as enough of a wake-up call to get people to at least look into using Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3.

Which means more to you: free speech or corporate secrecy?

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Apple has been ordered to pay almost $700,000 (Ars Technica, MacNN) for the legal fees of the reporters it sued to find out who their confidential sources were.

There are lots of Apple users on the Progressive Left, people who claim to value freedom of speech for its own sake. I ask you: Is this the kind of behavior you should reward with your money? Is brand loyalty worth more to you than your freedom of speech?

It’s time to more critically examine at what Apple is doing; go beyond warm fuzzies you might get from their ads.

If you’re having a hard time seeing how this case works in your favor, imagine if Apple made something that mattered more (food, for instance) and was able to keep their industrial design descriptions locked up. The same power Apple tried to claim here is the power other corporations would claim tomorrow if they could. They’d be able to hide a number of problems that could adversely affect the health of everyone who ate that food or worked in that business. The more power you place in corporate hands, the more you need to know what corporations do, plan to do, and the more you realize you need democratic control over corporations.

Which mainstream media will cover today’s forum?

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Today, Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) hosted a forum with Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) book authors and veterans of the Iraq war. They had a significant and thorough discussion of what has happened up to now in Iraq. The discussion included explanations of financial and ideological reasons why the administration is pro-war.

Which news outlets will give it coverage and analysis? Who will get to hear it?

I watched it on C-SPAN, live. It was very informative and important. I highly suggest watching it in its entirety, for your own benefit and because you’re not likely to hear about it anywhere else. Perhaps they’ll repeat it on C-SPAN later today.

Bad Vista campaigning in New York

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BadVista.org, an FSFThe BadVista.org campaign logo campaign to “advocate for the freedom of computer users, opposing adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free (as in freedom) software alternatives.” is hosting two actions to coincide with the release of Microsoft Windows Vista in New York City tomorrow at 11am and 2pm.

If you can make it, please do go and help BadVista.org. Sadly, I won’t be able to go, so I’ll look forward to reading about the event.

Update 2007-01-31: BadVista’s messages were well received despite Microsoft’s attempt to corral them into a “free speech zone” like the Democrat and Republican conventions.

Daily Show for more war, more soldiers?

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I’m told that Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” is one of the most popular places younger viewers get their news. More popular than late night chat shows and corporate news outlets, not that either of those shows make better choices. I watched the 2007 January 25 show with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) to see what ideas this show brought to its viewers. I was disappointed but not surprised to learn that this show frames a pro-war stance where getting out of Iraq is quickly ruled out as something people don’t want.

This is odd to me because polls indicate strong disapproval with President George W. Bush, and the 2006 shuffling of the deck chairs in Congress was largely interpreted as Americans expressing disagreement with continuing the occupation of Iraq. This is a golden time to get mainstream press for the Out Of Iraq Now message so that it can be debated honestly and thoroughly.

Jon Stewart said that leaving Iraq immediately was outside the allowable range of debate

I think people do believe, though, that we can’t leave—just in a—like some sort of Dante’s Inferno and kind of walk away and be like ‘Wow, who started that fire!’. You know. I think most people believe that there’s something very serious to be done there.

Schumer replied that “the rational way to do it” means:

  • “stop policing a civil war; no one bargained for that”, which is shockingly stupid in itself (how dare this immoral and illegal invasion and occupation turn into something ugly!). Schumer’s point here is chiefly convenient in its admission that Iraq is in civil war. Until recently, reps of both major corporate political parties told the US to stay in Iraq to prevent civil war. According to Seymour Hersh on Democracy Now!, Iraq was in a civil war in mid-2005. No matter when it began, it all happened on our watch and our continued presence apparently makes things worse.
  • “just focus on anti-terrorism; you know, the small groups of al-Qaida”, which means we still define terrorism so that it doesn’t include our actions abroad: invasion and occupation, selling wars to the American people based on lies, and ignoring how this war fits a brutal pattern of US involvement around the world.
  • using “many fewer troops; they don’t have to be in harms way” again defies the obvious (there’s a safe place for an occupying force to reside in a country they made hostile to their presence?) and reaffirms that we’ll continue occupying Iraq.

The Out Of Iraq Now message based on the immorality of war goes unrepresented on either side of this discussion, much like what one finds in corporate “news”. Apparently, it’s still too radical to criticize continuing to do what we shouldn’t have done in the first place and were warned against before the invasion began.

I have little reason to believe that Americans will stop the Iran war before it begins.

How Corporate Media Fights Criticism: Spocko and KSFO

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Blogger “Spocko” recorded and cited instances where Disney-owned Just say no to Disney KSFO-AM radio hosts Brian Sussman, Melanie Morgan, and Tom Brenner called for tortures and killings, used racist language, and aired speech against KSFO advertisers. Visa pulled their ads due to Spocko’s involvement and now apparently Disney fears that more advertisers will pull their ads too. Disney has threatened to sue Spocko for copyright infringement. Disney pulled Spocko’s blog offline for a while, but it has returned. Some of the audio clips, however, are not available on his blog. I’ve rescued the clips I could find so you could hear them for yourself.

While I can appreciate the tactic Spocko is using to bring change here (asking KSFO advertisers if this is what they want their brand name linked with), maintaining the image of a brand simply isn’t as important as threatening violence or death (ethically speaking or, less importantly, legally speaking). However, Spocko’s plan allows these advertisers to help with Spocko’s legal costs by contributing to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is defending Spocko against Disney.

Daily KOS has more on this story.

Audio clips of the aforementioned KSFO hosts in Ogg Vorbis format.

British citizens: Please help fight software patents

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If you’re British, please sign this UK government petition to tell the Prime Minister to make software patents clearly unenforcible before 20 February. If this petition helps you stay clear of the madness Americans have (most likely unknowingly) brought upon themselves, it’s a good thing.

Software patents are government-issued monopolies on ideas used in software development. Software patents hurt software developers in all but the largest patent holding firms (IBM holds the most patents right now) because software patents prevent us from distributing software that implements a number of popular algorithms including MP3 and (at one time) compressed GIF image files which are widely used on the World Wide Web. In order to properly implement support for MP3 you need a program which uses certain ideas that are patented. Without a license, those ideas are off-limits to many software developers—developers in countries which have software patents.

Alternatives which aren’t patent-encumbered, such as Ogg Vorbis (a functional substitute for MP3) and PNG (a functional substitute for GIF), are hard to popularize despite being technically superior. The software most people use most often don’t support these unencumbered formats well if at all.

The chief benefactors of software patents are multinational corporations which are, not coincidentally, the largest patent holders.

If England rejects software patents, British citizens will be safe from losing software patent infringement lawsuits. Anyone can get American patents, so the British citizens and corporations could get American patents and sue Americans for patent infringement. By working to stop software patents, you can help to save yourself.

I’ve mirrored a talk by Richard Stallman about the dangers of software patents (video, audio). Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Quoting the petition:

Software patents are used by convicted monopolists to threaten customers who consider using rival software. As a result, patents stifle innovation.

Patents are supposed to increase the rate of innovation by publicising how inventions work. Reading a software patent gives no useful information for creating or improving software. All patents are writen in a sufficiently cryptic language to prevent them from being of any use. Once decoded, the patents turn out to be for something so obvious that programmers find them laughable.

It is not funny because the cost of defending against nuicance lawsuites is huge.

The UK patent office grants software patents against the letter and the spirit of the law. They do this by pretending that there is a difference between software and ‘computer implemented inventions’.

Some companies waste money on ‘defensive patents’. These have no value against pure litigation companies and do not counter threats made directly to customers.