The sky, my friends, is falling and the walls are moving in.

Dave Cormier lets us know how the Blackboard patent foolishness just got a lot bleaker - thanks to his reading of Michael Feldstein comment that Blackboard is also trying to patent ““Content and portal systems and associated methods.” This would pretty much mean anything on the internet that’s associated with anything....AND that the patent action may have deeper systemic causes - primarily the attempt to politically control the net - "shareholders of blackboard includes some rediculously heavy hitters, including the Carlyle Group. ....I did not believe that there was any kind of conspiracy between DOPA, Net Neutrality and the Blackboard filing… I am here to say i’m no longer convinced.

If the next blackboard patent gives them rights over “content and portal systems and associated products” and DOPA cancels the personal voice and expression were talking about kids having in our classrooms and the ’series of tubes’ (net neutrality thingy) makes it so that we have to pay for using bandwidth, essentially allowing the tube owners to turn on and off the taps according to how much big money you have… what, I ask you, is left?

The walls keep moving in.