User-centric experts
Friday, May 29, 2009 at 07:00AM 
God bless the copyright "experts" whose thankless work and opinion goes into countless professional journal columns and articles. Bless them, but take them with a grain of salt.
Any "expert" who writes for a mainstream publication on copyright will ALWAYS err on the side of the most litigious group on copyright questions. And I do believe that will always be the copyright holder, not the user.
That's why it is great to find an increasing number of "user-centric" copyright experts, among them the Electronic Freedom Foundation. Please take a careful look at the EFF's responsible and balanced "Teaching Copyright" curriculum. (Thanks to Tom Hoffman for bringing it to my attention).
The lessons include:
My scan of this material shows a common-sensical approach that helps users know their rights, not just limitations to copyrighted work. The activities and support materials look doable.
One resource in the EFF curriculum that I was particularly pleased to see is a list of links to what I would define as "user-centric" experts. While I have developed such a list on my own wiki, EFF's list is more comprehensive (and also contains links to what look like some great articles I've not yet read.)
It's our professional obligation to not just teach traditional copyright obedience, but to seek out, champion and teach the ideas of those individuals and organizations who question current intellectual property rules and practices.
Oh, I think I am gettin' me a t-shirt with Justice Marshall's great quote printed on it to wear at my next copyright workshop.
Reader Comments (2)
I don't know Doug: is giving six lessons on copyright a good idea for the classroom? Maybe some lessons could be combined or combine it all into one or two lessons? What would you recommend?
Hi LibraryBob,
My recommendation would be to take as much of this as makes sense to use and adopt it to fit your own circumstances. I've yet to see ANY curriculum I'd adopt whole hog.
All the best,
Doug