How has the read-write web impacted copyright?

From an e-mail this week, Nadine asks:

Could you elaborate about how wiki’s and blogs in education are impacted (or not) by intellectual property? One of my principals in my district is taking a class for her Doctorate. She is not involved with Web2.0 technology at all so she relies on me for all things technology. She's asked me this question several times. While sitting in a session this morning (at the time you were presenting), she once again told me that her professor is looking for more information.

I've given her a lot of info about the proliferation of open source - a collaborative, sharing culture and creative commons, which I think is pretty much all you have to know when creating content on a blog or wiki. Maybe I'm completely off base so I'd like if you could give me some more input on her behalf.

An interesting question (that I am sure I fully understand) meriting a discussion, I believe. I'll start it and hope others will contribute their ideas.

My sense is that the read-write web has created a good deal of urgency to everyone understanding and applying  copyright law and fair use policies. What really separates Web 2.0 from Web 1.0 is that any idiot can publish of public content with no financial investment, no technical skills and no writing ability (or original thoughts). This means:

• that anyone who publishes ought to have a firm grasp on what is legal and ethical in regard to the use of others' intellectual property as a part of his own creation.
• that anyone who publishes ought to have a firm grasp on what IP protection he would like applied to his own work.

The biggest difference to me is not the copyright laws or how they are applied, but in the number of people who now need to understand and apply them on a very regular basis.

The increase in the number of people being impacted by copyright laws - either as producer or consumer - has given rise to some populist-type calls for reform - Free Software movement, Creative Commons, Electronic Freedom Foundation, etc. And the ease with which IP can be distributed online is forcing new economic models of how creators profit from their work.

Oh, Nadine, I suspect anyone smart enough to get a doctorate ought to be smart enough to realize he/she should know a little something about this Web 2.0 business and how it may impact education. But I hope this helps.

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I've created a page of links to all my fair use ethics scenarios here. I hope they prove to be good discussion starters...

Comments

[Tom Hoffman]

Yes, I'd make two points. The web has:

* caused people to see the value of voluntarily ceding some of the rights under copyright;

* increased the scale of casual copyright violations. All of a sudden people are casually copy/pasting your work into THE GLOBAL ENCYCLOPEDIA.

[Laurie Conzemius]

Doug,
I didn't get to talk to you afterward, but your copyright session caused lots of controversial discussion! I agreed with most of what you said, but I do think the 2000+ songs on the typical teen's ipod is a little less like your mischievous apple-theft and a lot more like plain old theft. However, I think you brought some common sense to an extremely important discussion! Thanks!

[Amy Hopkins]

Very interesting thoughts on copyright and Web 2.0. I teach technology at a MS in Texas and my students call me the "Copyright Queen!" My kids think it's such a boring topic,but they understand it well because it's a daily part of our learning. Most of what we create/produce involves copyright issues, whether we like it or not. We learn about the law, Fair Use, public domain and Creative Commons.

I believe our problem is that most schools choose not to teach it because it's "boring." And, we don't start at an early enough age. By the time students reach middle school, if copyright is not covered at the elementary level, we have to break bad habits. Copyright is too complex of a subject to introduce to kids as teenagers...it must be taught from kindergarten on, in every subject, using age appropriate lessons.

For those of us who are passionate about kids using material in the right way, we must continue to talk about it in all forums and teach good alternatives, like Creative Commons.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Tom,

I agree with both your observations. There seems to be a diminution of the seriousness of copyright law. Which maybe is not a bad thing!

Doug

Hi Laurie,

I am glad I stirred the pot a little. The session was designed to do that. Yeah, 2000 songs is a lot of apples!

Doug

Hi Amy,

I am not convinced that there any inherently "boring" topics - just those that have not been made relevant to the learner.

My guess is that we don't teach copyright early or often enough because we as teachers are too uncertain about it ourselves!

All the best,

Doug