As some of you have been made aware, Pearson responded to links to my post with a Take Down order.

  • We expected it.
  • It is their right.
  • It is currently the law….. (thanks to the inattention of the American electorate when it came up to be debated and voted on as law.)
  • It was part of the reason we published the piece anyways.

The DMCA law was passed when the Chinese were copying American producers’ movies and selling the copies for a dollar; no money was coming back to the authors.  Well, that was not right most of us felt, and so we passed a law that said:  “it is illegal to publish someone else’s work and get rich off of it, not paying the author his fair share;  you must take it down of your site or face criminal charges….”  (You may remember when Prince allegedly sued a mom whose baby was dancing in the kitchen to Prince’s music playing in the living room down in the background… )

As with almost everything, there is good and bad.

It is with small hope that we dared dream, that by provoking Pearson to use the DMCA to cover up the abuse of children, this might become a test case as to which level or how far this law should reach…

Should it be a total blanket?  Or, should there be holes, allowing us to protect our children for example. We feel the use of blanket proprietary in the field of public education, opens a dangerous door and is no different than protecting people who physically abuse children. By enforcing the DMCA here, what we are doing is protecting those who “psychologically” abuse children, by taking down all exposes alerting the public to the harm they are doing… 

The difference of course between perverts and Pearson, is that one promotes physical abuse, the other mental. Both leave long lasting psychological scars that would not be there, had the perpetrators not forced their way upon children…..

The ball, as it should be in a democracy, is in your court now.  We’ve done our part.  We’ve alerted you to a problem. If this is to go forward, it needs to begin with you, flow out from all your friends to your government representatives, overcome corporate influence and intransigence, and stop proprietary control on anything involving the People’s right to know, particularly in Public Education…

I’m sure every lawyer is salivating; it is so ripe for a citizens’ lawsuit.  All the necessary requirements are here.  The public is forced by Government to have their children take these tests, without ever knowing what is in them…  whereas if we want, we can find out what is in a vaccine, or food (which we are not forced to take btw). They have to post all the ingredients.  But we can’t… legally…. find out what it means when we are told our child is “below target”, our teacher is “incompetent”, our school is “failing”…

To these questions we are told:  “here are the test scores”… but are never allowed to ask and find out… how these scores were compiled….

We have done our civic duty and gone ahead and  illuminated you, the public, as to how these low scores are compiled.

The rest is up to you, now.  Who knows?  Maybe this is just a windmill……Maybe concerned parents are just Don Quixotes,….  time will have to tell.

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BTW, if you’ve never seen one, here is what a “take-down” order looks like…..

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The following material has been removed from your account in response to the DMCA takedown notice copied at
the bottom of this email:

Tweet:https://twitter.com/PearsonHasNoBooty/status/****************** – I refuse to make my kids cry last yr, & 4 them, I opt’d out this year also. Here is why: https://t.co/iRkfXsK432    @BadassTeachersA@valeriestrauss

If you believe the material has been removed as a result of mistake or misidentification,
you may send us a counter-notification of your objection pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 512(g)(3).

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******************************
DMCA Takedown Notice

== Copyright owner: Laura Slover
== Name: Kevin Michael Days
== Company: PARCC Inc.
== Job title: Assoicate Director, Operations
== Email address: kdays@parcconline.org

== Address: 1747 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 6th Floor
== City: Washington
== State/Province: District of Columbia
== Postal code: 20006
== Country: United States
== Phone (optional): 2027488077
== Fax (optional): n/a