Another Luddite Patent

This fits well into the item which follows, because it is about education policy and the principles underlying Open Source Politics.

The present thesis on knowledge is that it should be closed. It should be treated as property. It should be either an economic good or have its access restricted in some way.

The Open Source Thesis is that this is nonsense. Knowledge should be open and freely available. Incentives are only relevant if they create more knowledge. Restrictions are anti-American.

In line with this, the idiots at the U.S. Patent Office have actually granted a patent covering all course management, to an outfit called Blackboard. These chumps are now trying to shake-down, or shut down, all online education in this country (based on this overly-broad patent) starting with a company called Desire2Learn.

Following is the actual language from this patent, which is filed as number 6,988,138:

1. A course-based system for providing to an educational community
of users access to a plurality of online courses, comprising:

 

a) a plurality of user computers, with each user computer being
associated with a user of the system and with each user being capable
of having predefined characteristics indicative of multiple
predetermined  roles in the system, each role providing a level of
access to a plurality  of data files associated with a particular
course and a level of control over the data files associated with the
course with the multiple predetermined user roles comprising at least
two user’s predetermined roles selected from the group consisting of a
student role in one or more course associated with a student user, an
instructor role in one or more courses associated with an
instructor user and an administrator role associated with an
administrator user, and
b)  a server computer in communication with each of the user computers
over a network, the server computer comprising: means for storing a
plurality of data files associated with a course, means for assigning a
level of access to  and control of each data file based on a user of
the system’s predetermined role in a course; means for determining
whether access to a data file associated with the course is authorized;
means for allowing access to and control of the data file associated
with the course if  authorization is granted based on the access level
of the user of the system.

 

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the instructor
user is provided with an  access level to enable the creation and
editing of a plurality of files associated with a
course.
3. The system of claim 2 wherein the course files
comprise an announcement file.
4. The system of claim
2 wherein the course files comprise a course information file.

You would might as well patent education, or the Internet itself. This is also why "business method patents" should be forbidden. Let people create a better mousetrap. When you patent the idea of a mousetrap you’re just stealing from the commons.

This patent is absurd. A complete review of patent and copyright law, aimed at opening knowledge rather than closing it, is an essential tenet of Open Source Politics.