With Schools Shut Down, Educators Turn To Video Games To Help Educate Students

from the evil-video-games dept

It's funny how fast things can change. With the exception of our recent stories on how esports has taken over the sporting world due to the COVID-19 shutdown, any other review of our stories on video games would leave you with the impression that gaming has tons of IP problems and is also the scapegoat for many of the world's problems. Blamed for real world violence, for teenager apathy, for falling school test scores, and even for men not being manly enough, there seems to have been very little for which some beep-boop games couldn't be blamed.

And then came COVID-19 and its shutdown of schools across the world. And so many teachers naturally turned to the evil video games as a tool to continue to educate their students.

Kevin Péloquin, a history teacher from Montreal, hoped to take his high school students of Collège Saint-Hilaire on a trip to Greece. His mixed class from grades 10 and 11 would visit historical sites like the Parthenon and record their observations for a project they would later share with their classmates. Then the covid-19 pandemic scrapped their educational itinerary. Instead of a physical trip to Greece, Péloquin proposed, what if his students could digitally tour Greece — or even better — explore it as it was thousands of years ago? He first weighed the potential of virtual reality, but soon pivoted toward a video game.

Alongside its action-packed fictional story line, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey includes a robust education mode and a research-based recreation of ancient Greece. Péloquin’s students will play individually in the coming weeks from their homes and use that as the foundation for their reports.

Now, the Assassin's Creed example isn't alone. Teachers of students young and old are also using games like Minecraft, which also has an educator mode, and Roblox to keep students engaged, teach versions of planned lessons, and otherwise continue their education.

This really shouldn't be all that surprising. Entertainment mediums have always been repurposed for educational use. Whether its film, music, or art, these things have always found their way into the classroom as teaching tools. If anything, video games are more natural allies of teachers, given that they are interactive and can be modded or altered for educational reasons, whereas film and books cannot. And apparently both students and game makers are getting on board with this.

“My intention is to motivate my students to continue with the course,” Péloquin said, whose course is optional at Collège Saint-Hilaire. “When I spoke about it with my students, they seemed really, really pleased and surprised that we can work on our history course through a video game.”

Ubisoft granted Péloquin and his 23 students free access to Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey for three months through Google Stadia, a cloud-based streaming service. This lets all the students play through the game via an Internet connection, no matter how powerful their home computers are.

We're all somewhat in the business of finding silver linings these days, lest we go insane. The silver lining I propose is that it sure would be nice if coming out of this self-imposed isolation and shutdown of our daily lives also saw a shift in how video games are viewed.

Filed Under: covid-19, distance learning, education, lockdown, shutdown, video games

Ajit Pai Refuses To Brief Congress On What He Plans To Do About Wireless Location Data Scandals

from the thanks-but-no-thanks dept

So last week yet another location data scandal emerged for the wireless industry, highlighting once again how carriers are collecting your location data, then selling it to a universe of sometimes shady partners with little to no oversight or accountability. Like the Securus and LocationSmart scandals before it, last week's Motherboard report highlighted how all manner of dubious dudebros (and law enforcement officers) have been abusing this data for years, and the Ajit Pai FCC has yet to so much as mention the problem, much less spend a single calorie addressing it in any meaningful way.

Shortly after the scandal broke last week, Frank Pallone, the Chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, asked Pai (pdf) to brief Congress on the steps the agency was taking to address the wireless sector's long-standing failure to adequately address location data abuse. Pai's response? Yeah, no thanks.

In a statement issued by Pallone, he says Pai's office claimed that since the location data scandal wasn't putting lives at risk, Pai could not attend such a briefing during the government shutdown:

"Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to brief Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the real-time tracking of cell phone location, as reported by Motherboard last week. In a phone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of human life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown.

While the FCC's working on a skeleton crew right now due to the shut down, there's nothing actually stopping Pai from wandering down the road to answer a few questions, something Pallone was quick to highlight in his statement:

"There’s nothing in the law that should stop the Chairman personally from meeting about this serious threat that could allow criminals to track the location of police officers on patrol, victims of domestic abuse, or foreign adversaries to track military personnel on American soil. The Committee will continue to press the FCC to prioritize public safety, national security, and protecting consumers."

Granted Pai wasn't doing much about this problem when the government was open, either.

Academics and other privacy experts have told me this could easily be addressed using the FCC and FTC authority we already have (read: we don't even need a new privacy law), we've just chosen to kowtow to telecom lobbyists instead. In fact the FCC's privacy rules would have addressed the issue by giving consumers more control of how their location data is shared and sold, but sector lobbyists made quick work of those rules back in 2017. Even having Pai publicly state that this behavior is unacceptable might go a long way toward addressing the issue, though he's yet to do even that.

Pai has made it fairly clear by now that he sees government consumer protection oversight as largely unnecessary, and all criticism of his unpopular policies as entirely political in nature, therefore making it OK to ignore (the myopia of that belief system most obviously exemplified by his attacks on net neutrality). As a result, you should expect the FCC to continue to do little to nothing about location data scandals. At least until there's enough scandals of this type to push public outrage past the breaking point, finally making it clear that doing absolutely nothing is no longer an option. So, 2025 or so?

Filed Under: ajit pai, congress, e&c, fcc, frank pallone, house energy & commerce committee, location, location data, privacy, shutdown

Disappointing That Twitter Threatened Twitpic, But Story Doesn't Add Up

from the you-don't-need-a-registered-trademark dept

A few days ago, Twitpic, which was the original third party service for hosting images for your tweets, announced that it was shutting down "unexpectedly" because Twitter was threatening to pull its API access if the company didn't drop its trademark application for Twitpic -- an application that had been pending since 2009. Considering that Twitpic was one of the earliest of many third party services built on top of Twitter that helped make Twitter so valuable in the early days, it's certainly disappointing to see it go. It's also something of a legacy reminder that Twitter has been slowly, but surely, destroying all such third party services that helped make it so popular. That's disappointing, if not all that surprising. Platforms all too frequently end up swallowing those who rely too strongly upon them -- and, these days, to be honest, there's little reason to use Twitpic instead of Twitter's own image hosting (or some other options as well).

It's even more disappointing that this is all happening over a trademark dispute. Back in 2009, in fact, we highlighted Twitpic as one example (of a few) of how Twitter seemed to take a very open attitude towards its trademarks and let the various companies building on its platform make use of different forms of "twitter" and "tweet." A year later, the company was even more explicit in offering "free" licenses for its trademark for third party services. That's pretty clearly changed these days, and building Twitter as a more closed system where all of the innovation has to come from within, rather than from third parties, is unfortunate (and potentially quite limiting for the future).

All that said... I'm really not sure I buy this excuse for why Twitpic is shutting down:

We originally filed for our trademark in 2009 and our first use in commerce dates back to February 2008 when we launched. We encountered several hurdles and difficulties in getting our trademark approved even though our first use in commerce predated other applications, but we worked through each challenge and in fact had just recently finished the last one. During the “published for opposition” phase of the trademark is when Twitter reached out to our counsel and implied we could be denied access to their API if we did not give up our mark.

Unfortunately we do not have the resources to fend off a large company like Twitter to maintain our mark which we believe whole heartedly is rightfully ours. Therefore, we have decided to shut down Twitpic.

But... that makes no sense at all. Twitpic does not need a registered trademark in order to stay in business. It has no need to fight Twitter on this, and if its concern is the legal fees, why not just drop the whole trademark application. Registered trademarks have some uses, but common law trademarks are nearly as powerful for most important cases. Twitpic could easily just drop the trademark application process (saving legal fees there as well) and stay in business. The idea that you need a registered trademark makes no sense. The idea that you'd shut down the entire business just because Twitter opposed the trademark also makes no sense. It sounds much more like this was a convenient excuse for Twitpic to shut down while "blaming" Twitter for something, but without pointing out that the real problem might have been back when Twitter built in its own photo hosting service.

Filed Under: api, opposition, shutdown, trademark, twitpic
Companies: twitpic, twitter

The Unintended Consequences Of The Shutdown Of Silk Road

from the yes,-it's-gone,-but-now-what dept

The closing down of Silk Road by the feds was almost certainly inevitable. In fact, especially in light of the details suggesting how sloppy Ross Ulbricht was at times, it's somewhat amazing it lasted as long as it did. That said, in the past few days I've seen a couple of articles that are highlighting the unintended consequences of the closure. First up is Conor Friedersdorf over at The Atlantic, discussing how the closure of Silk Road almost certainly makes the world less safe. In some ways, this reminds me of similar discussions about targeting marketplaces vs. targeting users (such as Craigslist). While many people have a gut reaction that it makes sense to go after the marketplace/platform, the reality is that it's the users that drive it, and those users will continue to do the same illegal acts as before, but most likely in a less safe manner.

Friedersdorf highlights how, assuming everything in the NY complaint is accurate, Silk Road functioned as a fairly safe and efficient market for buying what generally appeared to be high quality illegal drugs for personal use in a much safer and more trusted manner than going out on the street to do the same. And, on top of that, it appears that many of the sellers were from overseas where the drug trade might be even more dangerous:

On many thousands of occasions, drug dealers in foreign countries decided that, rather than using armed truck drivers, bribed customs agents, desperate drug mules, thuggish regional distributors, and street level drug dealers who used guns to defend their territory, they’d just mail drugs directly to their far away customers. Of course, folks at the beginning of the supply chain were still often violent drug cartels who one hates to see profit. But from the perspective of the many innocents who suffer from the black market supply chains involved in traditional drug sales, narcotics via mail order would seem to be a vast improvement.

The FBI summed up its case against The Silk Road by writing that “the site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream e-commerce websites.” Insofar as it trafficked in violence-for-hire and hacked bank accounts, that was a bad thing — society has an interest in as much friction as possible in the market for hit men! But compared to the epidemic violence that has characterized the drug trade for the entirety of the War on Drugs, and that shows no signs of abating in the foreseeable future, a frictionless drug trade starts to seem like a relative utopia.

The “friction” is often dead teenagers on urban streets.

Of course you could make an argument that Friedersdorf's argument is almost as much a condemnation of the overall War on Drugs as it is on Silk Road itself. In fact, you could argue that the "success" of Silk Road highlights how a legal and regulated market for such drugs would likely be quite efficient and safe. That's not a "defense" of Silk Road or a suggestion that what Ulbricht did was morally correct. However, it's just a statement of reality. The War on Drugs has a very large number of victims, and many of them are totally unrelated to drug addicts, but rather come with the infrastructure necessary to run a massive illegal business.

That brings us to the second article. Someone who worked for a competing online black market called Atlantis, which had closed just a few weeks earlier, has written up a fascinating post mortem of Silk Road, in which he (or she) notes that we're about to see a lot of similar black markets now that the market leader has been cleared out by the feds.

As if there wasn’t enough suitors ready to rise to the challenge of being the next DPR, to make it easier there is already a functioning open-source project know as BitWasp which can simply be downloaded and installed on an onion web server and the next SilkRoad is (almost) ready to go. Below is a short description of the project from its facebook page where they make no secret of the fact the project aims to aid the development of future anonymous marketplaces flowing in the case of busts like just happened Silk Road.

“BitWasp Marketplace is a light weight, completely open source, anonymous bitcoin marketplace specifically built for use in conjunction with Tor or I2P via the hidden services such as .onion websites and eepsites (for I2P).

The goal of this project is to do the following:

1. Lower the barrier of entry and needed skill-set to operate a website like silkroad. This will increase the number of silkroad styled sites on the internet, and this increase will lead to a stronger pressure on governments to change their draconian drug law policies into something more practical and respecting of individual liberty.

Just like open source forum software revolutionized the ability for individuals to freely share ideas within niche communities, Bitwasp will revolutionize the ability for individuals to sell and buy materials and digital files within online communities.

2. Plans by the many, not by the few. This is essential because, as with nature, competition will select for the best, most secure, and most revolutionary marketplaces. Silkroad is great; but I suspect many minds working on many sites with various add-ons and extensions will lead to many better marketplaces in the long run.”

In other words, just like the court shutting down Napster over a decade ago resulted in a whole series of alternative file sharing networks, some that were much more underground and harder to stop, it seems likely that something similar is about to happen with black markets. In fact, the former Atlantis employee notes that the combination of Ulbricht's carelessness and the fact that it took nearly two and a half years to track him down likely means that others will rush into the space, believing they can do it "right" to protect themselves.

The closing of Silk Road and the arrest of Ulbricht is an interesting story, no doubt, but it seems like just the very first chapter in the world of black markets.

Filed Under: copycats, drug dealing, safety, security, shutdown
Companies: silk road

Brazilian Judge Overreacts, Orders Arrest Of Head Of Google's Operations In Brazil Over Refusal To Censor YouTube Video

from the secondary-liabiity dept

We've noted in the past that Brazil doesn't seem to have much of a concept of safe harbors for secondary liability, as it's blamed Google for actions of its users in the past, even once ordering that YouTube be shut down, or blocked due to a video that someone didn't want seen. Once more, the Brazilian courts are at it again. Last week, a judge apparently ordered Google to take down a YouTube video that attacked a mayoral candidate for the city of Campo Grande. Google refused, and the judge, Flavio Peren, has responded by ordering all Google services be shut down for 24 hours and that the head of Google's operations in Brazil, Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, be arrested.

To say that this is an extreme overreaction, would be an understatement. Because of one video, about one local mayoral candidate (which, thanks to this publicity many more people are likely to see), all of Google should be blocked for people in Brazil and the head of Google's operations in Brazil should be arrested? Talk about a disproportionate response. Not only is it extreme, it makes no sense. Google didn't create or upload the video. It's just hosting it. If the video is illegal, blame whoever created it and uploaded it.

Google is appealing the ruling, but it still seems extreme. Google's transparency report has noted in the past that Brazil is perhaps the most aggressive country when it comes to content removal requests -- but that only suggests that someone should be thinking more carefully about how fast the Brazilian courts are to issue these kinds of injunctions without seeming to understand Google's role.

Filed Under: brazil, censorship, defamation, fabio jose silva coelho, flavio peren, secondary liability, shutdown, youtube
Companies: google

Has The Megaupload Shutdown Been Good For The Entertainment Industry?

from the thoughts? dept

One of our most vocal (yet anonymous) critics posted an off-topic comment on a totally unrelated story mocking us for not having covered the story of how Hollywood has been saved (saved!) thanks to the shutdown of Megaupload. Of course, the reason we hadn't covered the story was because we didn't know about it. He referenced a couple of French news reports, which I hadn't seen until I had some time just now to catch up on some old comments. He could have submitted the stories, but he insisted that it would be a total waste of time because we ignore any story that we disagree with. That's pretty funny, considering many, many of the stories here are ones that challenge our views. And, I'm especially interested in reports of actual data, even if it conflicts with other data we've seen in the past. In fact, I'm especially interested in such stories, because my focus is figuring out what's really happening and understanding what's actually best for culture and society. So data that actually challenges my assumptions is some of the most useful data around.

Unfortunately, the stories don't actually have any data. The first one is totally anecdotal, concerning a guy who now goes to the movie rental store to rent (physical) movies since the shutdown of Megaupload, and the second one is about claims from TV stations that their websites are getting more traffic since the shutdown of Megaupload. Both are anecdotal, not data based, and really just seem to scream out the obvious: man, does the entertainment industry do a horrible job giving consumers what they want. If Megaupload's website was offering a better experience than the TV networks' own offerings... they should be firing their web designers and starting again. As for the guy renting videos... we'll see how long that lasts.

The same commenter then left a comment with some bullet point claims. He doesn't source them, so I have no idea how accurate they are, but they seem to indicate the same point in that second article. In the few weeks after Megaupload got shut down, TV station websites got more traffic. Again, this seems to simply show how bad a job they must have been doing in the past to attract viewers to their own websites. It also means that as soon as something better comes along (and it will), people will split. Ignoring that the market is telling you something is no way to build a long-term business.

Of course, we've also seen significant other data from firms that have access to a much wider view of internet traffic, which suggested that Megaupload traffic pretty quickly shifted to other, similar sites. Of course, some of those sites have since shut down or changed models, but anyone who thinks that more such sites aren't springing up (with some keeping a lower profile) simply hasn't been paying much attention to how the internet works.

Filed Under: anecdotes, data, revenue, shutdown, streaming
Companies: megaupload

A Look At How Egypt Shut Down The Internet

from the a-few-phone-calls dept

With Egypt taking the extreme step of shutting down the internet last week, a lot of people started wondering just how does a country go about doing that. According to a report by Ryan Singel at Wired, the answer appears to be with a series of phone calls to ISPs. Wired published this telling image from Arbor Networks, that shows just how dramatic the cut off was: The report notes that while there isn't anything like a big red "stop the internet" button, and there are a variety of different internet providers, it's still possible to shut them all down with just a few phone calls. And you can kind of see that in the fact that the turn off didn't all happen exactly at once, but there were a series of drops over the course of a few hours, leading up to that big drop off. The report does note that at least one ISP, Noor, appears to still be operating, which appears to represent that tiny bit of blue at the bottom of the chart.

It looks like ISPs as a bottleneck may be yet another piece of internet infrastructure that's a bit too centralized.

Filed Under: egypt, internet, shutdown

Microsoft's Patent On Fast Shutdowns Shows Why Windows Is So Slow To Shut Down

from the you-need-a-patent-for-that dept

A bunch of folks have sent over the story of how Microsoft recently patented its method of shutting down Windows (7,788,474), which plenty of people are mocking for all sorts of reasons. Reader Prashanth points out the fact that the patent actually helps demonstrate why Microsoft's shut down process is so slow. The whole thing just highlights how companies these days file for completely ridiculous patents just to pad their patent portfolio, and potentially to block others from doing pretty obvious things.

Filed Under: operating system, patents, shutdown, windows
Companies: microsoft