Talk:Blackboard Inc.

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This page has been cited as a source by a media organization. See the 2006 press source article for details.

The citation is in: Justin Pope. "Patent fight over online schooling", BusinessWeek, 2006-08-27.

Advertising. This whole page reads like it was copied from the company's "About:" page. User:Zoe|^(talk) 22:42, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Questionable Edit. I had put the following paragraph at the close of the article to counter the advert tone of the article, only to have it removed by a new user with no explanation. I would rather get a discussion of why this was removed than do an automatic revert - what do people think? And, with the paragraph below, could we remove the advert tag? User:Dialectric June 20, 2006 quote: - Moodle and the Sakai Project are open source alternatives to the Blackboard Academic Suite. These projects grew out of a need for a low cost, high flexibility course and content management software, and are supported by universities and system administrators who see the high cost of purchasing and administrating Blackboard products, and the closed source nature of those products, as significant drawbacks.

Desire2Learn lawsuit. Cleaned up this text. Added and fixed details. Added info on the Moodle organization's efforts to publicize the lawsuit. Reorganized the page - seems to look cleaner now. Cheers. --dilettante 23:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

--141.156.144.132 23:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Bb/Scholar360 Comparison. Removed the Bb-Scholar360 comparison link in External Links section. This comparison was marketing material created and hosted by Scholar360, not by a neutral third party.

1 cupcake lawsuit
2 Blackboard patent analyzed
3 partisan politics
4 Blackboard patent
5 NPOV?

[edit] cupcake lawsuit

Was it a lawsuit or just a complaint? --Gbleem 03:43, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Blackboard patent analyzed

Here is my layman analysis of the Blackboard patent. Patent here: [[1]] The key to this patent is two-fold: first, a MEANS to ASSIGN a level of ACCESS to EACH data file based on the user's role (i.e., student or teacher); second, this means to determine whether access is warranted, and to control the data file. To break this patent, that is, to work around it (avoid infringement), you simply have to design a system that does not ASSIGN to EACH data file a level of ACCESS, nor determine whether access is warranted. How to do this? Easy. You simply allow each student and teacher to access a shared DIRECTORY (folder) rather than a file. Another workaround, since the patent covers server-client networks, is to have a "peer-to-peer" network, like gnutella or edonkey. Finally, you can simply fight the patent in court (which one company is doing). Now this workaround only avoids direct infringment--the patent holder can argue of indirect infringement as well. Also, it may not be technically possible to implement this workaround. For this reason, it might make more sense to try and invalidate the patent in court. Language from the patent here: "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.

[edit] partisan politics

The link alleging close ties between Federated and the Republican party appears to go to a strongly partisan web site. To maintain NPOV, it would be better to justify the claim that "some of the Donahues are among the biggest individual donors to the Republican National Committee and to the Bush family" with a link to a better source, such as the Federal Election Commission.

Update: I went back and added POV-check-section to this section. It seems like there are a lot of unsourced/questionably-sourced, and perhaps non-NPOV compliant statments in there.

--141.156.144.132 12:34, 17 August 2006 (UTC): Oh man, this "Blackboard's ownership" section is conspiracy theory at its best. It's drawn word for word from this blog post.

The blog is written by George Roberts aka Wikipedia user, User:Peaceful, who added the "Blackboard's ownership" section to the Wikipedia entry.

When you google around, it's pretty clear that Roberts is spinning an undocumented conspiracy theory. Examples:

His comments on this blog post: "Blackboard’s major shareholders include Federated Investors, the Carlyle Group and Oak Hill Capital Partners. These firms are very close to the Whitehouse and are among the biggest corporate and individual donors to the Republican Party and the Bush family. Although I usually favour cock-up to conspiracy, the Bb patent skirmish is, maybe, an important little battle in the hearts-and-minds war."

This post from his blog: "With Federated, Carlyle and Oak Hill all in the Bb shareholders club along with Bill Gates, Microsoft and Pearson, Blackboard might be seen as a bit of a darling. So the question becomes why on two fronts: why Bb, and why the patent and litigation route? Is it that Bb's behaviour (or the behaviour of the company's principals) makes it attractive to big-time buccaneering neocons, or is the company being gently encouraged in this direction by its owners? And/or is there another angle to be explored? One to do with shaping the tools and, because of the nature of the VLE/LMS toolkit, shaping the institutions that shape the minds that make the world what it is?"

Another one from Roberts: "Blackboard provides a means towards control of the curriculum should someone want to. The patent application was, possibly, late dot-com chutzpah. Its subsequent deployment strikes me as strategic and in line with neoconservative affinities. In fact the patent pending status must have been one of the reasons Microsoft and the venture capitalists backed Bb in the first place. Should the patent not have been granted they could have quietly sold up."

None of these assertions are documented. This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia.

" This is not the kind of stuff that belongs in Wikipedia."

I have to agree. To be credible, the author would need to demonstrate that a) Blackboard has significantly more institutional investors than similar publicly held coporations (possible, but unlikely) and b) that those institutional investors were significantly more "Republican" than the norm for such groups (seems implausible; investment bankers, venture capitalists, and the like tend to be rather Republican as a general rule).

Otherwise, it does look like partisan conspiracy mongering. I don't see Microsoft investing in Blackboard as particularly noteworthy; they have their fingers in a lot of pies (e.g., Microsoft has also donated money to Moodle, a GPL course management system). Unless this section can be justified with links to credible sources, it should be deleted.

It's sad that there is a certain demographic that seems compelled to climb on their favorite political hobbyhorse, regardless of the nominal subject under discussion. Not everything involves a Bush conspiracy, just as not everything involved a Clinton conspiracy back in his day. I find partisan screeching of any stripe less than useful. Keep it on your blog, not in Wikipedia.

BTW, I'm not a Republican (or a Democrat), and I think Blackboard's recent actions are morally repugnant and will, in the long term, prove to be a financial disaster for the company. What were they thinking?

I see someone cleaned this up and got rid of most of the over-the-top stuff, but I still question whether it's noteworthy at all. Firms like Morgan Stanley invest in thousands of different publicly held corporations (they hold positions in 4,566 different companies as I type; their $44 million investment in Blackboard doesn't show up until you get to the 34th screen of the list, so it's very small by their standards).

Also, any list of this nature is practically guaranteed to be outdated almost before it's entered. Unless someone can provide a clear reason why institutional holdings in Blackboard are of particular interest, this entire section should be deleted.

The investments by Microsoft and Pearson Publishing are significant. Blackboard has a well-documented history of collaboration with Microsoft, which to a large extent makes them representative of Microsoft's presence in e-learning. Additionally, Blackboard has documented agreements with publishers and is a means of marketing commercial product to clients.

I work in the field of educational technology at a univeristy. Not to support conspiracy theories, but there the discussion about 'who owns the content' isn't just about culling learning materials for free. There is a legitimate fear from professors of being blacklisted for having liberal views. Perhaps that is connected to what you are discussing. This blog tells the story and it would be easy to dig up legitimate news sources. I remember reading about these instances as they happened. http://www.theinquirer.net/images/articles/blackboard.pdf

IF Bb is involved in such a scheme, that will be the end of their business. Campus are running from Bb due to high prices and this patent crap. I was a local hero for migrating my univeristy off Bb. Computerhag 14:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

138.88.67.103 20:30, 2 September 2006 (UTC) Removed the Blackboard Ownership section. It was flagged weeks ago and no one has stood up and said that it should stay. The closest was the guy who said the investments by Microsoft and Pearson are significant.

The intent of the person who originally posted this section was conspiracy-mongering, i.e. trying to imply that the Blackboard patent controversy represents some kind of attempt by Republican/conservative to "shape the minds" of children by . . . what? By investing in a company and then somehow forcing the company to be successful and then strongarming the company into filing a patent that takes six years to be granted so that they can then . . . what? Blackboard *still* doesn't determine the content of the university courses that are delivered on its software. Does this George Roberts guy think that Bb has subliminal messages embedded in their logo or something?!? It's really just preposterous.

I looked at a dozen or so other Wikipedia articles on public companies and didn't see any that listed out the company's major investors. There doesn't seem to be any merit or purpose to having this section in the article.