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Daily Archive for Friday, October 26th, 2007

nov 10 – EDUCATIONAL UTILITY OF POKER

***
truth
the evidence to prove it
the question to ask
what is the game
who are the players

[this is the entire session of cyberone: hold’em history with howard lederer and crandell addington — a wonderful hour (the opening sequence with crandell addington previously posted is followed here now by howard lederer in discussion with andrew woods and my real-world avatar.]

vision for nov 10
we are building poker university to take full advantage best we can of the utility of poker in education. we gather people together who have been educating in and through poker and in and through the strategy of learning and teaching with games of skill. we bring them together with people of technical and business skill who can build the environment we design. we invite singapore (both govt and game conference) and the harvard pitf program, gambit and the gaming coders. we invite the online poker industry and its founders. we invite them to a meeting in second life on Berkman Island and on the net at gpsts.org and if they can come in person or want to send their designee in Austin East on the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, Planet Earth.

our mission is to set the specs for the university we are building.

***
read Christopher Costigan. he’s right on..

http://www.gambling911.com/Ron-Paul-Poker-Players-Alliance-102607.html

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Charles Nesson
Date: Oct 25, 2007 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: re Professor McDew
To: “Andrew M. Woods”

Who do we exclude. Let’s think back over our history and include everyone who can help us and who would be interested in coming and participating, and if you are worried about budgeting the cost of flying everyone in and putting them up at hotels, let’s turn the default the other way: “please come if you can, but you have to pay your own way.” Except for commitments already outstanding I don’t see a problem with that. Make it really nice for them when they get here.

I see a conference keynoted by macmanus and sexton with the sessions in discussion format moderated by you and me, dedicated in process to fred friendly and in substance to Bob Moses and John Doar. I see the room full of people who have worked at educating through and about poker. I want to invite them by saying come talk with me and Andrew about how to design our school. I want to explore collaboration with full tilt and world series in the formation of an educational environment built to my specs, including code of conduct, “absolute” transparency, state-of-the-art registration and tracking, return of part of the rake to the university and country of player origin, with instruction and tests and freeroll tournaments at which kids earn a stake, start at the bottom and then move up in stake only as they earn from that point forward. Earn and learn. I want to do it as an incentive based program for learning.

I’d like lunch at the hark and food-for-thought dinners (are you familiar with these) at local restaurants, followed by a charity poker tournament in the hark. Invitees may write a check to charity for any amount as an entry fee, the tournament to be played for the pleasure of place of finish and for the honor of the bracelet, awarded as a prize. I’d like every attendee to get a lance armstrong type bracelet designed for gpsts. This event should be covered by media and could be amazing. I’d like to urge as many of the poker players who were in dc as possible to come up for some or all of the day’s events.

This conference is a tremendous opportunity for us, as well as challenge. We have captured a lot of attention. We should take full advantage of it to further our mission.

U v. riaa: Motion to Quash Subpoena

Professor Nesson,
I am a freshman at the University of Alabama, and last week the
University forwarded “pre-lawsuit” letters from the RIAA to fourteen
students, and one of them happens to be my good friend. I have found
that the University of Alabama has the best interests of its students
at heart, but I think some lack of understanding about this issue was
shown on the University’s part when these letters were forwarded. I
read an op-ed you helped write in May of this year
(http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2007/05/01_nesson.php), and I wish
that our administrators would take a similar view of this situation.
The RIAA is clearly afraid to go after Harvard, no doubt because it
knows it would face a hard fight (that they would probably lose) in
doing so. I’m afraid that our administration just wants to take the
easy way out. It’s like they think “Ok well the law says this, and we
don’t want our school to look like it is causing trouble, so here’s
this letter, sorry.” We’re only 18 years old, so the idea of this huge
and powerful association coming after us is intimidating to say the
least. Basically, I want to let the U of A know that our students need
more support. However, I can already see the email they would send back
to me. It would say that the University makes its students a priority
and everything is being done to handle this situation in the best way
possible. So I guess I just want some advice on what to do…if
anything at all.

Sincerely,
Elena Roca

***
dear elena,
the pressure point in the RIAA’s assault on universities is the subpoena to the university for the names of students to fill in the blanks on their john and jane doe law suits. it is at that point that the university has an opportunity to resist in a court of law. without resistance by the university the students are lost. without resistance by the university the university itself signs on to be industry’s copyright police under a legal regime that all the world knows makes no sense in an internet age.

i’ve blogged it. the federal rules of civil procedure which would guide the motion to quash instructs the judge to allow the university to demonstrate that the enforcement of the subpoena imposes an undue burden on the university. enforcement of one subpoena means, of course, enforcement of all like subpoenas, so that the whole policy of the university is forced to conform, and if one university, then all university unless one resists. the question for the future is: do we prefer a world in which the dead hand of the past in the form of bloated copyright law wielded and preserved by riaa’s litigation campaign changes university for ever — or should we preserve the open trusting scholarly relationships and roles in college campus life by recognizing their loss as an undue burden the music industry is imposing by its strategy of enforcement of outmoded law.

see if you can interest the crimson white in picking up this correspondence. crimson white for alabama. crimson for harvard.

eon