The subversive view of copyright

It was this posting on LM_Net about downloading YouTube videos to one's hard drive that triggers this post:

This has been the subject of a lot of discussion on the Australian list because, according to the Terms and Conditions of Use, you cannot do this without the express permission of the video owner.

This is from the Terms of Use website http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

"You may access User Submissions solely: for your information and personal use; as intended through the normal functionality of the YouTube Service; and for Streaming. "Streaming" means a contemporaneous digital transmission of an audiovisual work via the Internet from the YouTube Service to a user's device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be copied, stored, permanently downloaded, or redistributed by the user. Accessing User Videos for any purpose or in any manner other than Streaming is expressly prohibited."

This was brought to our notice here when one of our members noticed that Jamie McKenzie was advocating downloading clips in an article he had written, so she wrote to him and he changed what he had written!

I have obviously been reading too many comments from people like Tom Hoffman, Peter Rock and Stephen Downes since this was my reaction...

I say go ahead and download YouTube videos regardless of what the "terms" say. Here is why:

1. I sincerely doubt there is any case law existing that would indicate whether YouTube's statement holds any legal water. When such a condition exists, you should ask yourself if it is any harder to ask forgiveness than permission when making a decision that is questionable. If you are abiding by _most_ of the fair use indicators and it leads to a better educational experience, don't wait for permission. Just do it. (Jamie, don't be a wimp!)
2. We should stop wasting our time fussing about this petty ante stuff. Downloading a YouTube video has about the same degree of criminality as stealing a sugar packet from a restaurant or driving 2 miles over the speed limit. Yeah, technically it may not be legal - but who really cares except those folks who never left Kohlberg's Law and Order stage of moral development. How is a kid downloading a illegal song any different from us stealing an apple from a neighbor's tree when we were young? - other than the fact we were simply mischievous and today's kids are criminals!
   

I am growing more and more convinced that we are simply tying ourselves in knots worrying about what people shouldn't be doing - especially on petty matters. (Who exactly suffers if a movie is shown in school as a reward rather than in direct F2F instruction?) Perhaps we should approach copyright to teaching people what rights they do have, about being honest when we don't know if something is legal or illegal and erring on the side of the consumer, and about using the morality of a situation rather than the legality to make a judgment. Ask me, we are genuinely in danger of creating a bunch of scofflaws out of our kids and teachers. (Read a more erudite expression of this on Joyce Valenza's blog.)

OK, have at me. Strip me of my library epaulets. Drum me out of the league of copyright cops.

But I said it and feel better for it.

It's called Intellectual Freedom

An open letter to technology directors who block YouTube, blogs, e-mail sites, and any other web resource not expressly required to be blocked by CIPA (which is pictoral pornography - period).

Dear Sirs:

There is long held belief in libraryland that one one selects a resource on the basis of it having some things of value rather than censor a resource based on it having some parts without value or which might possibly cause offense. In choosing to block YouTube, you are a censor. You violate your staff's and students' intellectual freedom, their rights to view. By arbitratily blocking other sites, you are violating your staff's and students' right to read. You are denying them their rights accorded by the First Amendment.

Let's take your policy to its logical conclusion. Were I, as a tech director, teacher, taxpayer or parent in your district, to ask you to block Wikipedia, Encyclopedia or World Book since each suggests evolution may be a reputable scientific theory, shouldn't you block those sources, despite them also having content of value to students? Should I disagree with the view of the NAACP website, ought you not block that as well? As a good Democrat, I really think most neocon values are pornographic and children shouldn't be exposed to them. Let's only allow students access to sites that espouse the "just say no" theory of birth control and STD prevention.

Or perhaps your district does block at this level.

Blocking Internet sights simply shows professional disrespect -  your values are good, other educators are not.

Smart people like you should know better.  It's better to allow and have a resource challenged, than to block it "just in case."

Do yourself and your students a favor and read up a little on Intellectual Freedom. A good place to start is at ALA's Intellectual Freedom Q&A site. Quite honestly, I don't see how anyone should be able to graduate from college without understanding the First Amendment. But's never too late to get that education one ought to have received back when. (Did you ever think that school is wasted on the young?)

All the best,

Doug

From the Amercian Library Association Office of Intellectual Freedom website:

What Is Intellectual Freedom?
Intellectual freedom is the right of every individual to both seek and receive information from all points of view without restriction. It provides for free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause or movement may be explored.

Why Is Intellectual Freedom Important?
Intellectual freedom is the basis for our democratic system. We expect our people to be self-governors. But to do so responsibly, our citizenry must be well-informed. Libraries provide the ideas and information, in a variety of formats, to allow people to inform themselves.

Intellectual freedom encompasses the freedom to hold, receive and disseminate ideas.

Who Attempts Censorship?
In most instances, a censor is a sincerely concerned individual who believes that censorship can improve society, protect children, and restore what the censor sees as lost moral values. But under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, each of us has the right to read, view, listen to, and disseminate constitutionally protected ideas, even if a censor finds those ideas offensive.

And who exactly needs tech skills? A rant

The lunch speaker at Kiwanis today bashed public education using slide after slide of dubious statistics. Schools don't graduate enough engineers. Too few 8th graders take algebra. Kids need tech skills. Yada, yada, yada.

Oh, he used: 

• slides that were packed text.
• slides without pictures or graphs.
• slides that he read to us.

And who needs tech skills?

I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the today's Cassandras who expect skills of all students we are graduating that they themselves don't have.

Johnson’s Test Fairness Plan: Require no high school tests that the adults who insist on them can’t pass.