In which old world copyright gives way to new world creative commons
Posted By Barbara Lindsey on December 17, 2008
CC License: Confusing Signals by Luis Argerich
In a previous post, Kevin spoke about copyright and Creative Commons from the perspective of a faculty member. Just ten years ago a significant amount of my time as a language lab director involved enforcing and documenting compliance with various media copyright requirements. In some languages, for example, we were allowed to make copies of audio materials for students to listen to outside the lab, for others, only for in-lab listening and for yet another group of students, for playback on a restricted number of lab stations. In no instance could we give individuals not enrolled in a particular course access to the media associated with that course. Software licenses had to be renewed annually and the number of licenses matched against the number of lab computers. We could make one copy of each film we purchased for archival purposes only, and in the event the original was damaged or lost, we could then, and only then, use that backup while we waited for our replacement to arrive. If faculty wanted help in inserting portions of legally purchased copyrighted material into say, a powerpoint presentation for use in class or for a lecture, we would have to evaluate if its use fell within the Fair Use Guidelines.
But then along came Napster and suddenly, everyone with a computer and internet access could easily share digital music peer to peer. And that they did, as we experienced at college campuses across the U.S., clogging up university bandwidth and making higher ed institutions vulnerable to copyright infringement lawsuits. The now ubiquitous YouTube arrived on the scene in 2005, just one year after Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, leading to a synergistic convergence of publishing platforms that unleashed the collective creativity of the community writ large. In response to increasingly sophisticated yet accessible means to ‘share’ and ‘stream’ media over the internet, Congress passed the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The result of this act was to divert a not insignificant portion of higher ed’s focus (and resources) from teaching and research to policing students’ use of campus broadband services. The 2002 Teach (Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization) Act was an attempt to reflect the educational needs of online learning environments. As with the DMCA, however, the Teach Act appears to have provided even less clarity not only on where and how educators (and their students) can use copyrighted materials, but also on the amount they can use.
Confused about what you can and can’t use? You’re not alone.
Larry Lessig, Stanford professor and eminent authority on copyright issues speaks here compellingly of the impact of current copyright restrictions on our students’ creativity.
Which is why I make a point of licensing my work with a Creative Commons license, using others’ Creative Commons licensed work and encouraging educators and students to do the same.
I’ll leave you with a one minute video by Molly Kleinman, a copyright specialist at the University of Michigan, in which she explains why she loves Creative Commons.
Let us know how you’ve addressed this issue on your campus. We’d love to hear your solutions.
In which old world copyright gives way to new world creative commons by Barbara Lindsey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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