Robert Paterson's Weblog

Inquisition - More On Blackboard from Dave

I feel so helpless - More from Dave

Blackboard patent - The sky, my friends, is falling.

By admin on net neutrality

I read two not so cheery blog posts this morning that indicate that things are now actually starting to get seriously bad. Michael Feldstein is telling us about another patent pending for blackboard and i got this blog post dropped into a comment from my second post on blackboard.

So, it seems that blackboard is also trying to patent ““Content and portal systems and associated methods.” This would pretty much mean anything on the internet that’s associated with anything. Anyone who believes that their system is going to escape and all they have to do is wait around for the LMS industry to implode should really go over to michael’s blog and read his post.

How? This can’t happen. I’ll call my… well. It seems that that option isn’t looking so good either. A quick look at the shareholders of blackboard includes some rediculously heavy hitters, including the Carlyle Group. It would seem that blackboard has shareholders at THE highest level (check out political affiliations for the Carlyle group on that wikipedia page). I firmly stated during our rundown on this on Sunday night that i did not believe that there was any kind of conspiracy between DOPA, Net Neutrality and the Blackboard filing… I am here to say i’m no longer convinced.

If the next blackboard patent gives them rights over “content and portal systems and associated products” and DOPA cancels the personal voice and expression were talking about kids having in our classrooms and the ’series of tubes’ (net neutrality thingy) makes it so that we have to pay for using bandwidth, essentially allowing the tube owners to turn on and off the taps according to how much big money you have… what, I ask you, is left?

Do we take our ball and go home? start a new net?

Michael was saying $1 to 2$ million dollars to fight the court case. Is that real money to the Carlyle Group? (not to mention the other shareholders in Blackboard).

If I wanted to control everything that was happening on the internet this is exactly what i’d do.
That’s not to say there is a conspiracy, just that if i was going to get a group of pals over to have a conspiracy and my conspiracy wanted to shut down free expression and voice on the internet… I’d probably do it this way.

• I’d say “let’s stop the online predators”.
• I’d say “lets lock down the websites that are violating legal patents”.
• I’d say “people are essentially stealing bandwidth right now, lets put a tap on that hose”.

The price of silence

Pastor Niemoller on being passive in the face of evil

They came for the Communists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Jew;
Then they came for me - And there was no one left to object.

The social web has stopped being a hobby and is now seen for what it can be - the force that can overturn the Matrix. So now the threat is seen to be real, all the forces of the Matrix are being marshalled to turn back the tide. Net Neutrality, DOPA and now Blackboard. This is only the beginning.

Time to get real folks - everything is at stake

Inqusition - Stephen Downes - Blackboard

As expected, Stephen weighs in too.

As stated on the Academic Commons website, the move has raised concerns that action may also be taken against open source projects Moodle and Sakai. As Alfred Essa observes, "By filing a patent infringement lawsuit against Desire2Learn Blackboard has at the same time fired a shot across the bow of open source projects such as Moodle, Sakai, and .LRN, which are slowly emerging as disruptive innovations in the elearning space. In the long run Blackboard knows it can't win on product quality or innovation. Therefore, it will exploit patents as its WMD."

And he adds, in my view correctly, "What is Blackboard's diabolical strategy to crush open source? I don't believe they will directly go after the open source projects. They don't need to. Blackboard just needs to create enough FUD among lawyers, whose entire frame of reference is built around litigation avoidance, so that new institutions interested in adopting an open source solution just won't go there." .....

Martin Langhoff writes on a Moodle forum (stupid login required, sorry), "After a quick check on the ATutor forums, and seeing there was no discussion about the patents, I've gotten in touch with Greg Gay -- he says: "If you are looking for evidence of LMS type apps prior to 1999, here's a study we did early that year. We'll be in contact with the patent office in Canada, to make sure no patent is issued here. We're onboard on this too." and I think that study is good stuff and having them on board is great. Some more prior art has been posted at Seb Schmoller's site about a Learning to Teach Online Course he and others developed in 1997 or 1998....

Some people see the positive in the move. Alex Reid ponders, "Perhaps Blackboard's patent is the evil impetus to move us away from a "course-based system" of 'online courses:' the bad idea that they want to claim as their fundamental intellectual property." As Scott Wilson suggests, "I hope we can use this as an opportunity...perhaps Tony Karrer is correct and that we are at the point of technology disruption, and we'll see the LMS displaced by simpler technologies with different non-functional characteristics (following the typical technology pattern)."