On Sunday there is a general election in Germany. Readers may be interested to see that the fastest growing party in Germany is the Pirate Party. Although they are unlikely to win sufficent vites ot enter Parliament, the Pirate Party is sunceeding in promoting a  debate over civil rights and restrictive copyright laws.

Wikipedia describes the party’s programme as follows. “The party opposes the dismantlement of civil rights in telephony and on the Internet, in particular the European data retention policies and Germany’s new Internet censorship law called Zugangserschwerungsgesetz. It also opposes artificial monopolies and various measures of surveillance of citizens.

The party favors the civil right to information privacy and reforms of copyright, education, computer science and genetic patents.

It promotes in particular an enhanced transparency of government by implementing open source governance and providing for APIs to allow for electronic inspection and control of government operations by the citizen.^[3]

The party opposes the dismantlement of civil rights in telephony and on the Internet, in particular the European data retention policies and Germany’s new Internet censorship law called Zugangserschwerungsgesetz. It also opposes artificial monopolies and various measures of surveillance of citizens.

The party favors the civil right to information privacy and reforms of copyright, education, computer science and genetic patents.

It promotes in particular an enhanced transparency of government by implementing open source governance and providing for APIs to allow for electronic inspection and control of government operations by the citizen.”^[3]

The Reuters newsblog quotes Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, who “said the traditional parties’ failure to properly understand the internet may have put wind in the Pirates’ sails. “The large parties have treated the issue as if the only people using the internet are old men with lewd ideas who want to look at pornographic images or practice paedophilia,” Neugebauer said in a recent TV interview.  ”If the Pirate Party manages to make clear in society the conflict which they presently represent … then they definitely have the potential to get above the five percent hurdle,” he added.”

The debates around the themes I talked about in my report on AltC last week have not gone away with a weekend of fantic blogging and twittering. This week I will try to write a series of posts expanding on the ideas being discussed. But first I have to get some administration done.

So here are just a couple of quick catch up points on some of these memes.

As I said last week, Open Educational Resources are hitting the mainstream, raising issues of institutional approaches and strategies. Should publishing as OER be prescribed for academics? What are the business models for supporting OERs? How can resources be discovered and reused? What is an ‘open scholar;?

Tonight is the first of a new series of Evolve / Educamp open online seminars on open content with presentations by Martin Weller and Martin Lindner.  The seminar takes place on the Elluminate platform – just click this link to access it – at 20.00 Central European Time, 1900 UK time.

Martin Weller will “explore the ways in which the term ‘open’ has changed in usage over the years since the founding of the Open University, and consider what ‘open’ principles such a university would be founded on now. The practice of being an ‘open scholar’, and the benefits and issues involved will be examined.”

Martin Lindner’s contribution is entitled ‘Open Content: Non Learners Anonymous;. His abstract says: “More and more, people get frustrated by training and education that is overly formalized, expensive, stealing too much lifetime or simply not producing usable learning results. On the other hand, the Web is presenting a plethora of free and open content for many subjects and fields. And we have new stunningly powerful tools for collaboration and knowledge that cost nearly nothing. But still people are not able to take full advantage of these possibilities, feeling to be left on their own with the ambitious task of “self-learning”. I would like to share and discuss some thoughts from a working group thinking about how we could set up self-organizing groups, where “Non-learners Anonymous” can use Web 2.0 tools and practices to break with the painful habit of non-learning.”

So how can we help creating self-organizing groups that can systematically take advantage of the “open content” in the web? What templates, tools and what rules should we arrange so that they can easily form, set up their project and their goals and then work collaboratively in a given time frame toward some tangible results.”

And for those of you interested in the “Is Twitter killing Blogging?” debate,  there is an interesting dicussion continuing on the Cloudworks site.

Cloudworks also hosts another page bringing together many of the contributions around “The VLE is Dead” debate.

I got back from the Alt-C confernce in Manchetser late last night and have spent today catching up with the urgent stuff. Now I have a lttle time to write up a quick reflection on the week’s events. So – in no particular order –

The People

The people are always the most important part of any conference. Alt-C brings together a wide cross section of the educational technology community in the UK and it was great to catch up with old and new friends alike.  The best ‘people bit’ for me was F-Alt – in providing spaces for like minded folks to share ideas in an informal atmosphere.

The Keynotes

I usually skip keynotes but this year went to all three – with Michael Wesch, Martin Bean and Terry Anderson (for recordings of keynotes and invited speakers see – http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk/recordings.html).  I greatly enjoyed Michael Wesch but am not sure he said anything new. Great style, great use of multi media, but I fear he is slipping into the ‘digital natives’ school of which I am highly sceptical. Twitterers (including me) were a bit hard on him, I think.

Martin Bean is the Vice Chancellor (designate) of the UK Open University. He jumped on the stage in a burst of energy and fairly wowed the audience. High points – explicit support for Open Learn and the forthcoming Social Learn platforms and services. Curious omissions – no mention of the OU Moodle platform or anything to do with assessment or business models.

For me the best of the three was Terry Anderson. OK – he does not have the same presentation charisma. But Terry is a great researcher and I particuarly liked his ideas about open researchers.

The programme

I have to say I was a little disappointed with the programme. Although the Crowdvine site makes it easier to find out what is going on when, I still found it quite difficult to make decisions what sessions to go to. Traditional conference abstracts do not really help much. It is not really Alt’s fault ,but I think the strand titles (and conference themes) could be more transparent. One problem is that in such a big conference people naturally have different levels of experience and different interests. Although many of the sessions I went to were well presented, from some I did not really learn anything new.

The technology

Being an ed-tech conference, the tech being used is always interesting. Alt-C had a much bigger online presence this year, allowing people to follow even if not physically present. Alt-c used Crowdvine for the second year, Cloudworks also set up an online confernce site and Manchester University provided a reliable and reasonably fast wireless service. But of course it was Twitter which dominated the event with hundreds of posts tagged with #AltC2009. How much did Twitter add to the conference? I am not sure – it is a great communication channel but I still have my doubts as to its value for reflective discourse.

Themes and Memes

This is going to be somewhat impressionistic, being based meainly on things I was involved in or things I talked to others about.

Open Educational Resources

The idea of Open Educational Resources seems to have mainstreamed, being seen by many institutions as teh best way to develop repositories and license resources.Whilst it was hgard to see any new busniness models for OER drvelopment, many institutions seem to be adopting OERs as a strategic reponse ot present economic and social challenges and pressures.

How important is the technology?

An old argument which just won’t go away. Personally I think technology is important and is socially shaped. As Martin Weller says “Alternatively, from my perspective the technology isn’t important argument is used as a justification to disregard anything technologically driven and hopefully carry on as we’ve always done. In this context suggesting that technology isn’t important is irresponsible.”

Blogging and Twittering

I got caught up in this one when Josie Fraser pursuaded me into a F-Alt Edubloggers meet up stand up debate on teh subject, Josie’s position is that Twitter is just another form of blogging, I say it is different in that the 140 character limit prevents the exploration of subjects in depth and does not really allow reflection on learning. At the end of the day we probably largely agree and most of teh audience abstained in the wrap up vote!. However, the meme is still running – see twtpoll by Matt Lingard and new cloudworks page entitled  “Is twitter killing blogging?”

The Future of The VLE

The VLE is dead debate organised by James Clay, ably chaired by Josie Fraser and with short inputs from James, Steve Wheeler, Nick Sharratt and myself was well attended F2F and via a stream. It has certainly caused lots of discussion. Pretty obviously despite all the interest in social software and PLes, VLEs are alive and kicking. Personally I would have liked to see more discussion on how the benefits of educational technology can be extended to lifelong learning and to those outside the institution but maybe Alt-C is just not that kind of conference! Great fun and may the debate continue.

Post Digital

This was the subject of a great pre-conference F-Alt kick off session led by Dave White and Rich Hall. To quote Dave’s excellent follow up blog post :

The post-technical then does not put technology second or first, it simply liberates the debate from those who build/code/provide the technology and puts it into the hands of those who appropriate it, the users, or ‘people’ as I like to call them, who write essays and poetry in Word, transform images in Photoshop, sustain friendships in Facebook, learn stuff by reading Wikipedia and express opinions in blogs.

The perspectives we are currently using, to come to an understanding of the cultural/educational influence of digital technologies and the opportunities therein, need to be reconsidered. I’m not sure yet if the answer lies in post-digital or post-technical approaches but I’m looking forward to tending these ideas over the next few months and seeing if something beautiful grows.”

A meme to watch for the future, I think.

Mobile and ambient technologies

Several excellent sessions around mobile technologies. I was also lucky to see a pre release demo of the forthcoming Doop augmented reality iPhone app mashing up with Twitter and Google myMaps. Very cool – will post more on this once it is ready.

More – much more

I greatly enjoyed Frances Bell at al’s Digital Identity session. Mark van Harmelen demoed the forthcoming mPLE. I loved Joss Winn’s session on WordPress goodness….more tomorrow when I wake up remembering all the great chats I have forgotten now.

Open educational Resources

The Evolve network seminars are back. We have planned a series of open seminars for the autumn in conjunction with the upcoming Educamp Event (November 6-7, in Austria). As the blurb says:

“Once again, the online sessions will be supported by the JISC sponsored EVOLVE Community. Graham Attwell and Cristina Costa, two of the co-founders of EVOLVE, will co-moderate the online events. Together with Martin Ebner they will organise these events. Three sessions will be offered prior to the face to face event in Graz, Austria.

The themes under discussion and the guest speakers of each event are listed below.

• Event #1
  Theme: Open Content
  Speakers: Martin Weller / Martin Lindner
  Date / Time : September 14, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to calender: Link

• Event #2
  Theme: PLEs (Personal Learning Environments)
  Speakers: Ralf Klamma / Erik Duval
  Date / Time: October 8, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to Calender: Link

• Event #3
  Theme: Mobile Learning
  Speackers: TBC
  Date / Time: October 29, 2009 / 19.00 (BST) / 20.00 (CEST) (check your local time)
  Link to Venue: Elluminate
  Add to Calender: Link

The online round tables will be in English and are open for the ‘worldwide’ audience. Elluminate will be the online conference platform used. (A tutorial on how to join the session is available here). The recording of the sessions will be made available afterwards on this website.

Further information about each session and speakers will be published one week prior to event to take place. So check this place often, and also follow the Evolve network on Facebook.

We look forward to the interesting discussions. Stay tuned and help us spread the word about it (when mentioning it on twitter, blogposts, your social networks, etc please use the following tags: #ecg09 #educamp09 #EduCampGraz #ort09).”

The end of September sees the annual European Conference on Educational Research in Vienna (ECER). For many years now, I have supported the Vocational Education and Training Network (VETNET) which forms a constituent section of the European Educational Research Association, the organisers of ECER.

Whilst VETNET has been extremely successful in organising around the conference, its attempts to form a stronger community of practice have been hampered by the lack of activities between conferences. One long discussed aim is to launch a research journal. Many hours of work have been taken up in drawing up proposals and negotiating with publishers, with little result. For some years now, I have been arguing for a web based open journal. Whilst some have seen the potential of such a development, the majority of researchers within the vocational and education training community have remained wedded to the traditional publisher led model, mainly, I think, feeling that the academic standing of a journal can only be secured through publisher involvement.

In that regard, I am delighted to read in OLDaily (welcome back from holidays, Stephen) of  the launch of AISHE-J (The All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education) which has just launched volume 1 number 1. “It is an open-access, peer-reviewed, journal of scholarly research into Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” Here’s the RSS Feed. The first issue includes an article from Phil Race on assessment as learning and Kate Day on learning environments.

Open Journal do not imply any less quality than traditional closed print journals. The more examples there are of such journals, the more the sceptics will be convinced. VETNET take note!

Yesterday afternoon I blogged about our forthcoming handbook about the use of Web 2.0 and social software in the classroom. The handbook is being produced by the EU Taccle project. I asked people to email me if they were interested in receiving free copies. Little did I anticipate the response. When I returned from a quick trip to the shops I already had received some 15 emails. Panic!

I produced a very quick Google form (whatever you think about Google, their forms application is awesome, embedded it in a WordPress page on this site and edited the blog to point to the form.

By now, some 75 people have requested copies of the book from about 15 countries. If nothing else, Web 2.0 and social software make dissemination easy. On the form I asked if anyone was interested in translating the handbook into other languages, given that it is to be published under a Creative Commons liscence. And to date I have had expressions of interest in translating the handbook into Greek, Icelandic, Portuguese, Arabic, Welsh and Catalan. Many thanks to you all – it just shows the power of Social software and Creative Commons working together.

I am a big fan of Mr. Downes. Usually I agree with what he says. But I think Stephen has called this one wrongly. In a comment in OL Daily on my post on last weeks open seminar on Edupunk Stephen says:

“In the 1980s, punk was replaced with what became known as New Wave. New Wave was a lot like punk, except that the artists were so dirty, untrustworthy, and disreputable. It represented, to many, the co-opetion [sic] of this movement. So when I read “Martin is seeking to open up the VLE and apply the ideas of edupunk in an institutional context [and not as] as subversive or a challenge to the establishment but rather as a way of enhancing the teaching and learning environment,” I want to call it N-Ed Wave or some such thing. Talking Heads. Human League. Soft Cell. Oh gawd. Say it ain’t so.”

I am not convinced about the movement from punk to New Wave. But as I said in my original article, we need to establish edupunk as having a meaning in its own right. The music analogy is getting stretched and has limited further purchase.

But coming back to Stephen’s comments about what Martin Ebner is doing, I disagree. Edupunk is about doing it yourself, about opening up educational technology to the users. And that can take many forms of activity. In a previous Evolve seminar on Personal Learning environments. In a CETIS presentation on Personal Learning and Web 2.0, Scott Wilson acknowledged the challenges posed by Web 2.0 to institutions. They could he siad, ignore, co-opt through embracing and extending or could invert though contributing and extending. Institutions should move:

• From hosting to consultancy (HE no longer an ISP or corporate IT provider)
• From closed to open ethos: on content, systems, processes
• Adding value to the Internet, not duplicating functionality with added control mechanisms

Individuals could contribute:

• Our information – data, research, publications, content via open web APIs
• Our expertise
• Our offerings and products
• Our role as facilitators, guides, and trusted source

Martin Ebner is working within Graz University to contribute and extend the use of Web 2.0 for learning . And for me that is certainly within the Edupunk ‘tradition’. In a great post entitled ‘Learning to Love the term Edupunk‘, Frances Bell says she realises that that she has “missed a dimension that Chris Sessums captures in his response to a blog post on a previous Edupunk sessions

“Edupunk embodies this notion of educators as artists, those who intentionally trace and explore traditional boundaries and human expression. The edupunk meme signifies more than just a tart phrase pasted on the media landscape. To truly understand its meaning, you have to live it.”

That is really important, to capture the creative outlets that an edupunk approach offers to teachers and other learners.  I am prepared to live it, and am privileged to work with students in higher education who are negotiating challenging boundaries in learning, work and society.”

Jim Groom has also been posting a series of articles showing how the edupunk idea can be practised in education.

The disucssions on edupunk have the potential to evolve a new idea and vision of education and of the uses to technology for learning. That means not just talking but acting. Acting in collbaoration, acting as individual researchers and acting within institutions. As Frances Bell says: “Edupunk is only the beginning.”

I was sent an (unasked for) email about a new journal. Academic spam. But there was an article I was interested in. And so instead of consigning the email to my spam box (as I should have) I followed the link – only to get this message.

Aaah. Why bother sending me this information if it is not open for me to read. The policy of closed journals is one which has lasted too long. It is time for change </end rant>.

I am ever more excited by the possibilities of ebook and emedia readers linked to open access publications. I think we are on the cusp of a big change in access to learning. Recently I produced a short consultancy report on the potential for a new journal. The major technical considerations in the publication of a journal, I said, was if it was to be open or closed and what media should the journal deploy? Below is an excerpt from the report.

Open or Closed Access

There has been much recent discussion about Open Access journals. Much of this stems from the Budapest Open Access Initiative launched by the  Open Society Institute (OSI)  to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet. The  Budapest Open Access Initiative is intended as a statement of principle, a statement of strategy, and a statement of commitment and has been signed by a growing number of individuals and organizations from around the world who represent researchers, universities, laboratories, libraries, foundations, journals, publishers, learned societies. Signatories include the University of Hamburg.

Open access journals are scholarly journals that are available to the reader “without financial or other barrier other than access to the internet itself.” Some are subsidized, and some require payment on behalf of the author. Subsidized journals are financed by an academic institution or a government information centre; those requiring payment are typically financed by money made available to researchers for the purpose from a public or private funding agency, as part of a research grant. There have also been several modifications of open access journals that have considerably different natures: hybrid open access journals and delayed open access journals.

Open access journals may be considered to be:

• Journals entirely open access
• Journals with research articles open access (hybrid open access journals)
• Journals with some research articles open access (hybrid open access journals)
• Journals with some articles open access and the other delayed access
• Journals with delayed open access (delayed open access journals)
• Journals permitting self-archiving of articles

It should be noted that many of the hybrid journals maintain both an open access or delayed access online version alongside a paid for print version.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/), maintained by the University of Malmo, and  which covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals and aims to cover all subjects and languages currently lists 3786 journals in the directory. 1330 journals are searchable at article level and at the time of writing 240714 articles are included in the DOAJ service. 258 of the journals are in the field of education and 50 in technology. A list of these education related journals is included in Appendix 2. it should be noted few, if any are in the filed of vocational education and training.

Th advantages of open access journals is obviously their accessibility. A number of extensive studies have shown that articles in open access journals are much more likely to be cited than those in closed access journals.

It has also been argued that open access journal will promote innovation, facilitate collaboration between researchers and that the results of research funded by public money should be published in the public domain. It is interesting to note that there appears no difference in status or scholarly reputation of journals between those with open and those with closed access.

Open Access on-line journals are particularly popular for allowing access to doctoral research. For example Educate (http://www.educatejournal.org/index.php?journal=educate) is published twice a year in June and December under the auspices of the Doctoral School at the Institute of Education, University of London. The journal aims to provide:

• opportunities for the dissemination of the work of current post-graduate researchers at any stage of their research, and recent doctoral graduates, on any aspect of education or related areas
• opportunities for the dissemination of “work in progress” to the academic community
• a resource for professionals involved in educational enquiry and research

Educate articles are peer reviewed by both an established academic and a current post-graduate researcher. Articles are further reviewed by the editorial board as a whole.

The obvious argument against is financial. Doubts have been raised over the viability of the journal publishers if Open Access becomes the norm (although these questions are also raised by the move to online journals). There is a further issue that payments by researchers for publishing will disadvantage those without access to substantial research grants.

Media – print, online or both and what about publishers?

There is a growing trend towards on-line journals. Indeed, all journals today would appear to have some form of web presence.

However there is a basic divide between those journals which are only available online and those which are also available through a print edition. For those which also maintain a print edition, varying levels of access may be provided to the online content as noted above. It should also be noted that those journals with restricted public access to online content, may often allow that access if the researchers institution has a subscription to the journal. This is under the so called Athens Access Management System. There is also a growing number of online journals that require a subscription for access to full articles.

Many of the major journal publishers – for instance Blackwells – are currently launching enhanced on-line platforms. Additional a number of university libraries are exploring providing only online access to journals. This is likely to be accelerated by the move to digitalise texts and by developments in mobile devices and book readers able to access the internet.

There are obviously advantages for on-line publications in terms of accessibility.

If a publication is only available through the internet there are major advantages in terms of cost. Put quite simply, it is possible to by-pass publishers who represent a considerable hurdle in launching any new journal. Publishers want to be sure there will be a financially viable market for a journal and in a relatively small research area such as VET are understandably cautious. Furthermore, the long lead in time in negotiating with publishers can dissipate effort and lessen initial enthusiasm. In addition there is access to relatively powerful Open Source journal software such as Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs) which claims to be running 1400 journals in ten languages in March 2008. There is some evidence to suggest it may be possible to shorten submission to publication turn around times using online journals.

So what are the disadvantages? Put quite simply, it  is one of prestige. Articles published by renowned academic journals have been seen as having higher prestige than those that are published online. This is not just a matter of prejudice. Many countries, including the Netherlands and UK, have a rating system for journals. And be it online or print, those backed by publishers have tended to have a higher research rating. Individual researchers may also feel that more traditional and often older professors do not value online publications.

This may be about to change. In the field of Technology Enhanced Learning, an area which would be expected to be in the forefront of any move to online publications, there are increasingly prestigious publications which are only available on line. Examples include the long established, peer review journal, First Monday, focused on the Internet, which since its launch in May 1996 has published 953 papers in 150 issues; these papers were written by 1,195 different authors. Equally prestigious is Innovate (http://www.innovateonline.info/?view=about), an open-access, peer-reviewed, online periodical  published bimonthly by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University in Canada. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology to enhance education and training in academic, commercial, and governmental settings.

It should also be noted that the  LOCKSS system (http://www.lockss.org/lockss/Home) allows a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of a journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

One probable future trend is the merger of different media. Video is increasingly of importance with many educational projects and initiatives publishing videos on public access sites such as Youtube (http://www.youtube.com). Blogging is an increasingly important way of publishing on work in progress. Online seminars are now freely available on all manner of topics. It is likely that journals will increasingly embrace such media with text publications accompanied by video material, slidecasts (audio and slide presentations) and by online seminars to present papers and discuss issues arising from the work.

There is another option between the idea of an online ‘self published’ journal and a print journal provided by a publisher. Some universities have themselves published journals. This is not particularly technically difficult. The major problem is distribution. Most university published journals tend to come from those universities with an associated publishing house, like the University of London Press or the University of Oxford Press, who in effect operate in little different a way than commercial publishers. Recently technical innovation has led to the development of printing on demand. Although there are different financial models, typically printers charge a flat fee per print edition and an extra fee per copy. The cover price is determined by those commissioning the printing. The printers will often distribute copies themselves. Individuals can order online and the book or journal will be printed when ordered and despatched by post. It is then possible to offer both an online version for free or a hard copy for those who would prefer to have
a print volume. The economic of this require further exploration but it is a rapidly growing market. It is interesting to note that in addition to a number of commercial printers in north Germany, Hamburg University Press (http://cmslib.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/hamburg-up/content/home.xml) is now offering printing on demand. There are also technical developments in machines which allow printing of books or newspapers on demand in a bookshop or kiosk.

No real time to blog today – much too much admin to allow such trivial things! But I couldn’t resist giving myself a short break from the spreadsheets to comment on two of today’s twitter memes.

The first is the draconian new Conditions of Service released by Facebook. As Chris Walters points out anything you upload to Facebook can now be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later. Want to close your account? Good for you, but Facebook still has the right to do whatever it wants with your old content. They can even sublicense it if they want.

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

That language is the same as in the old TOS, but there was an important couple of lines at the end of that section that have been removed:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

Furthermore, the “Termination” section near the end of the TOs states:

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.”

The second is the goings on in New Zealand where the protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A‘ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny has led to a viral campaign to black out avatars on social networking sites.

Is it it just that the law is an ass? Or is it that legislators are quite happy to take action to prevent individuals sharing files, sharing ideas and creating new works, but bow down to the real pirates – the Facebooks of the world. Money still counts when it comes to the law.