Re: [dvd-discuss] Teach ACT OF2001 -NOTHING to do with Teachingbut DMCATothe Classroom

["Michael A Rolenz" <Michael.A.Rolenz(at)aero.org>]

My thoughts exactly...except I deleted sonofabitch.....worse than this, it 
is making the idea that textbooks, lecture notes and all that can be put 
under a time limit that when it expires POOF, there goes your education. 
Whole chunks the the curriculum would not be books that you buy and a 
lecture that you hear and the words on the black board you see but digital 
works flashing before you, that you can't keep copies of....Consider too 
that many profs hand out lecture notes that later become text books.....I 
was among the first guinea pigs for John Fridy's lecture notes that later 
became his book on advanced calculus (now 2nd. ed.). My advisor has 
several sets of lecture notes that he could publish (but hasn't). Imagine 
they can put a DRM on the lecture notes that makes them unreadable when 
the book is published......

I need to read the report in moregorydetail but from those two section 
that caught my eye scanning through it, I'd say the whole point is to 
prevent ANY use of digital works in the classroom that doesn't expire the 
moment the students walk out the door at the end of the period.  Totally 
negating the benefits of digital works and the ease with which they can be 
created and distributed. Personally, I always got a lot out of taking my 
own handwritten (or electronic notes that I do now) on things for being 
able to jot down insights, comments, and remembering things ("now 
class...write out the fundmental theorem of calculus 100 times")

Recommendation: Anybody with ties to academia should give this one as much 
distribution to as many people as they can and maybe start writing letters 
and following this one NOW. The DMCA got slipped by looks like they want 
to finish the job. In a choice between progress through education and 
protection of copyright, the Senatorial direction is clear " Middle Ages 
Here We Come"




Ole Craig <olc@cs.umass.edu>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
01/30/02 03:13 PM
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        Subject:        Re: [dvd-discuss] Teach ACT OF2001 -NOTHING to do with Teachingbut DMCA 
Tothe Classroom


On 01/30/02 at 14:58, 'twas brillig and Michael A Rolenz scrobe:
> 
> Sorry to double post but 
> 
> ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/sr031.txt 
> 
[...]

>       Second, in the case of a digital transmission, the transmitting 
body 
> 
>    or institution is required to apply technological measures to prevent 

>    (i) retention of the work in accessible form by recipients to which 
it 
>    sends the work for longer than the class session, and (ii) 
unauthorized 
> 
>    further dissemination of the work in accessible form by such 
> recipients.
>    Measures intended to limit access to authorized recipients of 
>    transmissions from the transmitting body or institution are not 
>    addressed in this subparagraph (2)(D). Rather, they are the subjects 
of 
> 
>    subparagraphs (2)(C). 
>       The requirement that technological measures be applied to limit 
>    retention for no longer than the ``class session'' refers back to the 

>    requirement that the performance be made as an ``integral part of a 
>    class session.'' The duration of a ``class session'' in asynchronous 
>    distance education would generally be that period during which a 
> student
>    is logged on to the server of the institution or governmental body 
>    making the display or performance, but is likely to vary with the 
needs 
> 
>    of the student and with the design of the particular course. It does 
> not
>    mean the duration of a particular course (i.e., a semester or term), 
> but
>    rather is intended to describe the equivalent of an actual single 
>    face-to-face mediated class session (although it may be asynchronous 
> and
>    one student may remain online or retain access to the performance or 
>    display for longer than another student as needed to complete the 
class 
> 
>    session). Although flexibility is necessary to accomplish the 
>    pedagogical goals of distance education, the Committee expects that a 

>    common sense construction will be applied so that a copy or 
phonorecord 
> 
>    displayed or performed in the course of a distance education program 
>    would not remain in the possession of the recipient in a way that 
could 
> 
>    substitute for acquisition or for uses other than use in the 
particular 
> 
>    class session.

                 SonofaBITCH! I'm supposed to institute DRMs so that 
students
can't keep their class notes, just because the professor included a
snippet of Knuth or Comer & Stevens?! Fsck that!

                 And from the student perspective -- the long-term utility 
of
the lecture notes and handouts of a technical course can be enormous.
I was checking the lecture notes for some of my programming classes
*long* after I'd ceased being an undergrad. 

                                 Ole
--
Ole Craig * olc@cs.umass.edu * UNIX; postmaster, news, web; SGI martyr *
CS Computing Facility, UMass * <www.cs.umass.edu/~olc/> for public key 

perl -e 'print$i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'