links for 2009-04-22

Courts sure seem to pick and choose when copyright fits. If Google making a copy counts as a copyright violation, why not turnitin? "A federal appeals court last week affirmed a lower court’s decision that the Turnitin service does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database that the company uses to check works for academic dishonesty.

The classic "West Side Story" is enjoying its Broadway revival. Now comes the remix, "Worst Slide Story."

Very cool!

"Since 80% of the video on the web is currently played in Flash, this is no small announcement...Among the initial partners: Comcast, Intel, Netflix and the New York Times."

"The growth in support staff included some jobs that did not exist 20 years ago, like environmental sustainability officers and a broad array of information technology workers. The support staff category includes many different jobs, like residential-life staff, admissions and recruitment officers, fund-raisers, loan counselors and all the back-office staff positions responsible for complying with the new regulations and reporting requirements college face."

Gathering Storm parody

From a Penn State symposium on teaching and learning, danah boyd's presentation: "Abstract: Many American youth are embracing a wide array of social media as part of their everyday lives. From social network sites and texting to blogs and wikis, many youth are leveraging the power of social media to create, communicate, share, and learn. In this talk, I will use social network sites as a case study to examine critical shifts that are underway as a result of social media. I look at how inequality is perpetuated through these systems and the challenges that educators face when trying to incorporate these systems into the classroom. Finally, I conclude by discussing implications for educators."

The two judges making up the majority decision on the panel quote former US Sen. Biden, as well as US Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) in their 50 page explanation.

"The vast majority of us... want to and have been trying for years to change the old system to limit the time in which a petition can be filed and to limit the number of petitions that can be filed. So essentially you get one bite out of the apple," then-US Sen. Biden (D-DE) said, according to the 1995 Congressional Record.

"The proposal to limit inmates to one bite at the apple is sound in principle," US Sen. Kennedy had said.

The judges, in the recent Davis decision, go on to write that the intent of US Congress is clear and unambiguous, and that they do not want to go against the wishes of Congress.

"A lot of Democrats particularly in the 90s were on the tough on crime bandwagon. It was to their advantage...," Laura Moye...told Atlanta Progressive News.