CCLearn August 3, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright in the Classroom, Open Access and Institutional Repositories , 1 comment so farThe Creative Commons, the organization behind the increasingly-ubiquitous Creative Commons licenses, has recently announced the formation of a new division, CCLearn. The stated goal of CCLearn is to minimize the legal, technical and social barriers that impede the sharing and reuse of educational materials.
Towards this end, one of the activities of CCLearn will be to encourage those who create educational resources to make them available free of legal and technical barriers that discourage adaptation and creative reuse. The Creative Commons license, by which creators can waive their copyright claims as long as their works are used for non-profit educational purposes, is a major tool toward creating such “open educational resources.” So a major initiative of CCLearn will be to encourage those who create education resource to employ CC license or some similar mechanism to communicate their desire to share those resources with the educational community.
Equally important, of course, is the ability to find resources that are made openly available for educational purposes. An important aspect of CCLearn will be its Open Education Search, a tool that “aims to direct search engine traffic to the incredible diversity of OER repositories and communities.” This tool should make it much easier for faculty members to find resources they can use in their classes without having to worry about copyright concern. It is a frequent and bitter observation that our system of copyright law does not accommodate the needs of education very well, even as it relies on institutions of higher education for much of the material that populates that system. Careful attention as CCLearn develops its open education search tool is called for; it promises a system that could offer both a potential solution to some of these copyright problems and an immense resource for creative approaches to teaching.
“A Disgrace to the Forces of Evil” May 29, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright in the Classroom, Fair Use , 1 comment so farAlthough it is available from lots of sources, I can’t resist adding a reference to the “A Fair(y) Use Tale” video to this site. This 10 minute remix video, constructed entirely from Disney cartoons, offers a very clever explanation of copyright and fair use while at the same time asserting the latter as the justification for the whole creation. It could provide a valuable resource for teaching students about copyright and fair use; its evident bias in favor of aggressive fair use provides a needed balance to the one-side educational material offered by the content industries.
The video, which was created by Bucknell professor Eric Faden, is available on YouTube, of course, or through the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society web site (which is the link provided above). The presence of Stanford Law School as a host site may prevent the promiscuous use of take down notices to suppress this amusing and important work; as the video itself says, Disney is notorious for using its copyright to intimidate others and Stanford may be indicating its desire to push back some against that practice.
Be sure to read the “FBI Warning” at the beginning of the video; it is not at all what we are used to seeing on commercial videos. And listen for the quote used to title this post, which is part of the explanation of fair use.
WKRP in copyright limbo April 21, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright in the Classroom , 1 comment so farHow do the struggles to release a DVD of a 1970s era sit-com inform our difficulties with copyright in higher education? At the very least, the problems encountered in preparing a DVD of “WKRP in Cincinnati” illustrate the complex layers of rights with which academics who study or create multimedia must deal.
Those of us old enough to remember WKRP will recall that, in a sit-com set in a radio station, pop music was a central part of the story. Often the humor of a particular situation was created or enhanced by the music being aired on WKRP. The sound track of the show was a collection of contemporary pop, but the producers only licensed those tunes for a limited time. It was difficult, in 1982 when the show ended, to anticipate the need to release the shows in a format that had not yet been invented. But once the licenses expired, the music could not be used in subsequent releases, so a DVD of the show has been long delayed.
As William Patry explains in his blog post on this case, the complexity of music copyright is that there are multiple rights and rights holders for each recording, including, at least, a copyright in the underlying composition (sometimes one for the music and one for the lyric) and a copyright in the performance. When dealing with video, the rights situation is even more complex, with layer upon layer likely owned by different people. These are the complications that go into re-releasing a TV show, but they are also the difficult shoals that have to be navigated when an academic wants to use existing video to teach filmmaking techniques, for example, or get permission to put a video into a digital archive.
The good news (if you were a fan) is that WKRP in Cincinnati will be released on DVD shortly. The bad news is that much of the contemporary pop music has been replaced with “elevator music” versions that were much cheaper for the producer to license. All those classic songs will no longer be “living on the air in Cincinnati.” This small piece of TV history has fallen victim to the same burgeoning and increasingly expensive market for permissions that holds back much academic innovation in multi-media.
A more serious look at these problems for higher education can be found in the 2006 white paper from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society called “The Digital Learning Challenge,” which is linked under recommended reading in the right hand column, through our Connotea feed. It is a detailed (and rather discouraging) look at the many ways current copyright law hampers digital teaching and learning, and it isn’t even enlivened by a sound track featuring Pink Floyd or Blondie.
8 Cool things about the Creative Commons March 15, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Authors' Rights, Copyright in the Classroom , 2commentsEDUCAUSE, which is a non-profit organization devoted to promoting “the intelligent use of information technology” in higher education, has recently been offering a series of sort informational pamphlets call “7 things you should know about… ” The most recent item in this series is 7 things you should know about Creative Commons, and it is worth the attention of faculty seeking material that they can use in their classrooms without any of the copyright hassles that often arise.
The Creative Commons is a movement to encourage creators of all kinds of material to make their work available with only “some rights reserved” and with specific authorization for educational and other non-commercial uses already attached. Faculty who can find appropriate articles, image, video or music that is released under a Creative Commons license are way ahead in their ability to build a class without worrying about when and if the need to seek copyright permission. The two page PDF brochure linked above offers examples of teaching with Creative Commons materials, as well as more detail about what the Creative Commons is and how to find CC licensed material.
So what is the 8th cool thing about the Creative Commons? It is this article from the NY Times that describes the upcoming US tour by Brazilian songwriter and pop star Gilberto Gil, who also hapens to be the Minister of Culture for his nation. As a musican and a government official, Gil is an important advocate for the Creative Commons, which is rapidly becoming an international movement. As the article says, “One of Mr. Gil’s first actions after becoming the culture minister in 2003 was to form an alliance between Brazil and the nascent Creative Commons movement.” To anyone teaching about Latin American music and culture, that alliance should be good news indeed.
Know Your Copyrights February 18, 2007
Posted by Kevin Smith in : Copyright in the Classroom, Fair Use , add a commentThe Association of Research Libraries offers a concise and clear brochure, Know Your Copyrights, that stresses multiple opportunities to use copyrighted materials in the classroom. It is intended to emphasize the positive things that classroom instructors are allowed to do with copyrighted material, employing the various teaching exceptions built into copyright law. It is an ideal resource for classroom instructors who want to quickly comprehend what they can do, instead of focusing on what is not allowed. The link on the title above offers several ways to download this helpful brochure.
