Fair Use Discussions Continue

This New York Times article Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt discusses the issues around the bloggers' practice of quoting content from other sources. This has usually been considered fair use under current copyright law,

But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work — a practice sometimes called scraping — are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.

While some of the discussion is focused on loss of revenue, there are interesting points and speculation about the future of fair use, blogging, and copyright. In an information world without physical boundaries, the easy ability to copy and paste, and the difficulty of tracking your words online*, these issues will only continue.

*New services like this one called FairShare are popping up to help content creators better track their work online. (via ReadWriteWeb)

World Resources, Worldwide Access

Certainly one of the most remarkable and useful results of digitization and the Internet is the access we now have to amazing resources from around the world. ALA Direct, an email newsletter sent to members of the American Library Association, points out this resource:

The European Library offers free access to the resources of the 48 national libraries of Europe in 20 languages. Currently, the European Library gives access to 150 million items across Europe. The amount of referenced digital collections is constantly increasing. The library provides a vast virtual collection of material from all disciplines and offers visitors simple access to European cultural resources. The European Library is a noncommercial organization available to anyone around the world seeking books, maps, photographs, music, videos, and other materials. Participating institutions are all members of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), a foundation aiming at increasing and reinforcing the role of national libraries in Europe.

The library became available in November, but massive interest--to the tune of 10 million hits an hour--caused it to crash on its first day of operation. It re-opened a month later with quadrupled server capacity. It seems people really want access to all types of libraries and their vast resources.

Backchannel Hints

It has been interesting to read the blog posts about using the backchannel in classrooms. Here is an article How To Present While People Are Twittering with some insights and ideas on the backchannel. The article is from Pistachio, a consulting firm focused on "microsharing." You can read more here. Pistachio focuses on business, but there is much of interest to educators and librarians on their site and blog.

Deep Web

This NYT article discusses the work being done so search engines can search the Deep Web--resources that are not readily available including library catalogs, license information, and similar databases.

I Am...

I took the Book Quiz that Information Woman! pointed out.

You're To Kill a Mockingbird!

by Harper Lee

Perceived as a revolutionary and groundbreaking person, you have
changed the minds of many people. While questioning the authority around you, you've
also taken a significant amount of flack. But you've had the admirable guts to
persevere. There's a weird guy in the neighborhood using dubious means to protect you,
but you're pretty sure it's worth it in the end. In the end, it remains unclear to you
whether finches and mockingbirds get along in real life.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Language Learning

Here is a recent site for learning languages. busuu.com lets learners:

• Connect with native speakers and learn directly from other members of the busuu.com community
• Be completely flexible and learn only what you really need
• Have fun by experiencing a new way of learning languages and forget those boring grammar books

You can add it to this list from ReadWriteWeb of 20+ Ways to Learn a Language.

Update: But wait, there's more--Jane's E-learning Pick of the Day just published this list of 100+ language learning sites.

The Backchannel in Church

Amy from the Chaska MILI group blogs at One Foot in Front of the Other... Shes has a great post about the backchannel and using TodaysMeet in her German class (complete with German versions of "text speech"). Even more interesting is the discussion she had with her fellow congregants about the backchannel at church. The post is here.

It is a great example of what we were discussing--the prevalence of backchannel, how it is related to the presenter's content, and more. If her minister does set up Twitter or another backchannel in church, that will really take things to a different level! Hope she keeps us posted.

More About Facebook

Update 2: Facebook has backed off the change in Terms of Service and returned to the previous version. This is a result of user feedback.
Facebook has started a group called Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities formed specifically to allow people "to give input and suggestions on Facebook's Terms of Use."

The Consumerist pointed out that Facebook has changed its Terms of Service for user-generated content. See discussion of the post/issue in this Mashable article and also at Webware. The change makes it clear that Facebook owns the content, even after you leave Facebook. It does go on to explain the whys of this decision.
Update 1: The New York Times and its readers have weighed in on the issue.

You've probably seen the Facebook 25 Random Things About Me craze and maybe even done it. It has been covered everywhere, it seems. What do you think--too much information, fun, entertaining...?