Friday
15 June 2012
Copyright
Copyright has always been one of those
things that we hear about over and over by teachers and educators but we are
not necessarily sure exactly what it
is or why it is in place. The article ‘Openness as Catalyst for an Educational
Reformation’ by David Wiley, the article ‘Words in Collision: Copyright,
Technology, and Education’ by Stephen Marshall, websites like www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/copyrightlaw
and creative commons websites and the ‘A Fair(y) Use Tale’ all explain and
demonstrate what copyright is, its relation to education and the growing
dilemma between the two.
David Wiley starts off his article by
explaining that certain textbooks and other teaching and learning resources are
provided for free under a copyright license that grants the user permission to
engage in the “4R” activities: Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute. This allows
students and educators to use otherwise copyrighted material for education. He
then goes on to discuss the term “openness” and its relevance in education and
to copyright. In education the key term is openness with regards to the sharing
and giving of information; “openness is the sole means by which education is
effected. If a teacher is not sharing what he or she knows, there is no
education happening” (16). This ability to educate is increased with the
growing use and amount of information on the internet but along with expanding
access to knowledge education, specifically higher education is losing its way.
Wiley explains that educators are no longer displaying the essentials of
educational openness: “sharing, giving, and generosity”(20) but rather are beginning to desert these
principles and refusing to, for example, post their lecture notes online or
allow them to be published for other, future, students to see. Wiley concludes
by saying that “the more open we are, the more educated we will be” and urges
educators to display the principles of openness again because at the moment “learning
has suffered” (20).
Moving away from how educators are
injuring education by demanding the copyrights of their lectures and notes,
Stephen Marshall explores copyright and education with regards specifically to
Web 2.0. He begins by explaining that Web 2.0 does not force “users to engage
with formally created content” but rather allows users (i.e. students) “to
create new content by recombining preexisting media and tools”. To demonstrate
his point, Marshall describes a movie made by Robbie Dingo, in which Dingo in
the program Second Life created a new
world utilizing the Vincent Van Gogh painting Starry Night along with the song ‘Vincent’. Marshall, using this
example, describes how Dingo has violated the moral rights of the original Van
Gogh painting – because it is not under copyright -, violated the copyright of
the photographer whose photograph of the original painting Dingo used for his
world, and violated the copyrights attached to the sound recording, lyrics and
music of the song ‘Vincent; but has created,
with the use of all this copyright material, a new copyrighted work – the video-
to which he now owns the rights. This situation “illustrates the range and complex
issues that copyright brings to bear on creative works, including educational
materials, and international scope”. Marshall notes that many educational
materials run the risk of “inadvertently violating copyrights in the same
manner even where fair-use exemptions are believed to apply”. This dilemma is
demonstrated in the video ‘A Fair(y) Use Tale’ which utilizes Disney cartoons
to educate about copyright law. The ten plus minute video goes through five
chapters describing: a) the definition of copyright, b) what can be
copyrighted, c) copyright duration and the public domain, d) fair use, and e)
why use Disney cartoons. The final chapter explains that if fair use works than
the video is under legal protection because it is using copyrighted material
for education and it isn’t using the whole video but merely pieces of multiple
videos. This is explained in Chapter 4, that a small amount of copyrighted
material can be used to teach, for news reporting, parody, or critical comment.
The website www.edu-cyberpg.com and the creative
common websites explain for a teacher what copyright is then goes onto explain
its legal use by a teacher and a student with the example of music. It also has
a section that points out and describes the specifics laws that are associated
with copyright: Title 17 of the US code which is a document that details the
types of works that can be copyrights, the rights the copyright holder has (section
106), situations where copies may be made without the holder’s permission as
well as the penalties for copyright infringement (sections 501 and 506, Title
18, section 2319 details the punishment of copyright infringement). The
Creative common website is a site that works to minimize barriers of copyright
law by providing free licenses and tools that anyone can use to share their
educational materials with the world. Their licenses make textbooks, courses,
and lesson plans easy to find, easy to share, and easy to customize and combine
– helping to realize the full benefits of digital and print educational
resources. One example of a creative common website is www.pdphoto.org which is a “free public
domain photo database.
Copyright is a sticky subject,
particularly in education, like one of my professors once said “Everything is
copyrighted, there are no new ideas”.
A copyright is basically the protection of an individual’s, or companies’,
original ideas; but what are the exact definitions of ‘original’ and are there
really any ‘original’ ideas or is everything just building off of another idea?
If that is the case then it would be true that everything is copyrighted but
nothing actually belongs to anyone since no ideas are new. These are thoughts
to mull over but as long as the copyright laws are in use the precautions of
whose work you use and how you use it are still important.
