For the copyright section in block 6, I chose adventure #3: The Legal Quicksand of the Internet. In Marnie’s description of quicksand, she used the term “living”, which I found very appropriate after exploring this section because the nature of copyright law is dynamic and changing in response to its environment—very much like living things.
It seems like a logical place to start to define “copyright”. Well, according to copyright expert Wanda Noel and posted on the ‘Net Know How website (http://www.netknowhow.ca/nkhcrquestions.html):
Copyright law was created to protect creators of original material, and Copyright law protects the person or groups of persons who create original material — it establishes ownership. When copyright is broken (known as copyright infringement), there are legal repercussions which could result in claims for damages.
It is certainly not an unusual occurrence to receive from students an assignment of some sort which has evidently been copy-and-pasted from a website. (I’ve even had students not even bother to change the font. <sigh>). Being that I teach at the post-secondary level, I assumed (there was my first mistake) that students were familiar with the concept of copyright—and while they may not be entirely clear on how to give in text citations or footnotes, or maybe weren’t even clear on how to properly document a bibliography—they would at least be aware that copy-and-pasting without giving any credit to sources or original authors was, quite simply, wrong. On that regard, it was me who was, quite simply, wrong.
For that reason, I appreciated the article, also on the ‘Net Know How website which gave tools for teachers on how to teach students how not to plagiarize—how to properly quote, document, and credit sources. (http://wblrd.sk.ca/~teachlib_dev/info_lit/info_plagiarism.htm).
While I certainly wouldn’t make the argument that copyright laws are archaic and should be entirely tossed to the wayside—I have at times questioned whether they could use a more liberal and allowable approach as technologies have offered us so many opportunities to integrate and collaborate content. Without a deliberate motivation to either profit from or defame content, I sometimes have wondered why content—particularly what is available on the web can’t have more flexible copyright guidelines. Furthermore, I question the real ability of the law to enforce such strigent guidelines—that perhaps everyone’s efforts would be better used to target those who are pirating work, rather than using it for educational or entertainment purposes.
I therefore found the presentation by Larry Lessig entitled, “How Creativity is Strangled by the Law” very thought-provoking. He speaks about how we have moved from a read/write to a read-only culture and this is prohibiting users ability to generate content and be inhibitively creative. (Which to me, also appears to be in direct contrast to the movement in web 2.0 tools). Lessig questions the logic behind some copyright laws and thinks that perhaps the laws aren’t as progressive on this issue as they could/should be. He uses the example from the early days of aviation when land owners claimed that pilots which flew over their land were trespassing and must get permission every time they wanted to fly within the landowner’s airspace. While at that time, the number of planes was extremely limited, so this didn’t seem so unreasonable. But put that in relation to today, and it appears absolutely preposterous. It would be completely unrealistic for pilots to obtain permission from every land owner to fly within his/her airspace. If these laws were in place today, air travel would be impractical. So laws had to change. Progress with the times. It raises the question—perhaps copyright laws do too. Maybe copyright laws of today will be looked back on by our successors as antediluvian and primitive.
