Monthly Archives: August 2008

A password is a bushel

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Being at Brigham Young University now, I have many more opportunities to think about the relationships between my personal beliefs and my professional interests. This year’s Annual University Conference theme has focused on light, and during his address this morning, McKay School of Education Dean Richard Young quoted Matthew 5:14-16:

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

It occurred to me again that the password is a modern bushel. In other words, we develop these fabulous online materials, which could be highly useful to people throughout the world, but we then immediately put these materials behind password “protection,” which keeps people from accessing and using them. Why? Why do we put the candle of education under the password bushel? Why not set it on the candlestick of open licensing, so that it’s influence can radiate throughout the world?

I wonder if the meme “a password is a bushel / an open license is a candlestick” can catch on…

Open Ed 2007 Video Highlights

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For the next two weeks I’ll be pointing to video highlights from last year’s Open Education 2007 conference in order to whet your appetite for this year’s meeting. First up on the hit parade is Brian Lamb’s incredible keynote from last year’s conference.

BTW, you can also see the Rick Noblenski “blasting caps are dangerous” video mentioned by Brian in the keynote, which was developed by some of my students at USU. (If you haven’t seen Nixon vs Kennedy debate on blogs vs wikis or open water, also produced by students from the same class, I’d highly recommend them as well.)

If you can’t wait to see the rest of the videos, make the jump to the full collection of Open Ed 2007 videos, where you can also download the videos to your iPod or PSP. Otherwise, just sit back, relax, and I’ll highlight additional videos from last year’s conference here as we get closer to Open Ed 2008…

Major (US) Court Victory for Open Licenses

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As reported on Ars Technica, a recent United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decision has given some legal teeth to open licenses:

The lower court had found that redistributing software in violation of the terms of a free software license could constitute a breach of contract, but was not copyright infringement. The difference matters because copyright law affords much stronger remedies against infringement than does contract law. If allowed to stand, the decision could have neutered popular copyleft licenses such as the GPL and Creative Commons licenses. The district court decision was overturned on Wednesday by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Maybe this will finally quiet the “confused” people out there who think that those of us who support open licenses are anti-copyright. As pointed out by this case, open licenses depend heavily on copyright law to provide “incentives” for users to comply with the license and (as a last resort) enforcement mechanisms.