Category Archives: Intellectual Property

Textbook Costs

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Timothy Burke

Lots of cross-blog talk on this subject at the moment: why are textbooks so expensive? The answer is mostly that it’s a racket with some resemblance to some of the weird pricing that happens inside the health care system. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 11 Comments

The Visual Bottleneck

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Timothy Burke

So I finished a short movie on the third day of the Digital Storytelling workshop. I’ve got a number of reactions to the experience, which has been really interesting and useful in a variety of ways. For one, I’m struggling … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 4 Comments

Liveblogging NITLE, “Scholarly Collaboration and Small Colleges in a Digital Age”, 2nd panel

Posted on January 11, 2008 by Timothy Burke

The panels split into two different sessions, so I’m in a session on developing open-source collections and resources. First presentation is Robert Kieft and John Anderies talking about putting a reference source of Quaker biography into a wiki format. Bob … Continue reading →

Posted in Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | Comments Off

Thanks for Nothing

Posted on September 24, 2007 by Timothy Burke

If you want to see how counterproductive the current intellectual property environment can be for scholarly publishing, take a gander at the ACLS Humanities E-Book website. I foolishly inflicted an assignment on my students using this for today’s class, since … Continue reading →

Posted in Intellectual Property | 7 Comments

“Citation Plagiarism”

Posted on June 18, 2007 by Timothy Burke

There’s a very interesting entry by Bill Poser at Language Log on the issue of whether there is such a thing as citation plagiarism. (Poser argues no.) Inside Higher Education also links to a very interesting reply by Kerim Friedman … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Intellectual Property | 12 Comments

Archives, Nations, Ownership

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Timothy Burke

I have ambivalent feelings about debates over the ownership of physical objects that have sacred or heritage value to one group or institution and knowledge-producing value to another group or institution, such as the struggle over Native American remains held … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 18 Comments

Fun With Intellectual Property Issues, No. 340 in a Series: Aluka

Posted on April 24, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Regular readers have heard me complain before about the straight-up weirdness of the way the cost of research falls on institutions of higher education. Universities directly or indirectly subsidize faculty to carry out research through a variety of means: sabbaticals, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Africa, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 7 Comments

Liveblogging: Social Computing Symposium

Posted on May 8, 2006 by Timothy Burke

Thanks to the amazing Liz Lawley, I’m here at the 2006 Social Computing Symposium. So I’m going to try something I haven’t done before, and post up notes here on sessions. Right at the outset one thing that makes me … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging, Games and Gaming, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | 1 Comment

Kaavya Viswanathan, Christopher Paolini, and Remixing

Posted on April 28, 2006 by Timothy Burke

The first few examples that I read of Kaavya Viswanathan’s alleged plagiarism, I thought, “Well, that’s not so bad, or that a bit ambiguous.” Then I saw more and more examples and the ambiguity went away. Nor, like just about … Continue reading →

Posted in Intellectual Property, Popular Culture | 11 Comments

Race to the Bottom

Posted on February 28, 2006 by Timothy Burke

There are so many profoundly stupid, self-defeating or slickly corrupt initiatives out there at the moment in the area of intellectual property and digital rights management. The collective impression I get is of a slow form of economic and cultural … Continue reading →

Posted in Intellectual Property | 5 Comments