(via Ray Schroeder) In light of my weekend at I-Law, I’m not surprised at the news that 53 percent of kids admit to downloading music even though 88 percent of them know its protected by copyright. But what did surprise even me was this:
But only 18 percent of the students surveyed said they learned about copyright law from a teacher or other educator.
That’s just amazing. And as I said the other day, it’s indicative of the changes that we need to make in our classrooms when it comes to helping kids understand and manage everything that the Internet means, from research to news gathering to p2p to community. In my perfect school, it’s a mandatory course on Information and Internet Literacy covering media and blogs and p2p and all that stuff. But that means that more and more teachers need to become literate in these areas too, and in turn, they need to model effective an appropriate use. This quote could have come out of my mouth, too:
“I believe students understand the concept of copyright, but have few models of appropriate behavior to follow,” said Jim Hirsch, associate superintendent for technology at the Plano Independent School District in Texas. “Xeroxing of printed works, videotaping, ‘TiVo’-ing, ripping CDs, scanning, et cetera, are all techniques used in the workplace and at home by adults–which provides the illusion of appropriate use.”
Maybe it’s a course kids could take WITH their parents…
This needs a longer, more responsible response, which I’ll try to get to on my blog, but my gut reaction is that it isn’t my job to carry water for the entertainment industry. The undermining of the fair use doctrine, sorry, the “illusion of appropriate use,” does substantial harm to education in America. This is like a survey in the 50’s saying “80% of US schools are doing an inadequate job of teaching compliance with Jim Crow laws.”
I’m looking forward to Tom’s longer post. At this risk of being accused of “carry[ing] water for the entertainment industry”, I would agree that any good program on information technology and internet literacy, or media or even writing in general would have a substantial component on copyrights, plagiarism, and intellectual piracy (not to mention any class on ethics, morality, societal values etc). It seems to me inconsistent to condone theft of music and condemn theft of writing (though I’m not really sure if that’s what Tom suggested)
Ask the students in your class to write something. Take it, give it to another student to use. Once that student is done with it, wait a few days and then present it to the class. Make a big deal out of it, a really big deal. Never once give the first student any credit or praise of any kind. When its all said and done ask him how he felt about having is work ripped off. Then let him explain it to the class. Want to make an impact?
Ah come on live in the real world. If you place media on the web in a format that is readily accessible, presumably because you want folk to ‘use’ it, then isn’t it likely that they will both copy and edit it? If you want protection from copyright laws then publish in a way that requires money to change hands. OK, complex because when a third party republishes work they paid for this gets messy. Incidently, if you photograph a sculpture in a park and put the image on your web are you infringing someones rights?
There is a world of difference between making a copy of a copyrighted work for personal use and presenting copyrighted work as your own. Certainly teaching intellectual honesty is always important in schools. Spending time teaching students to comply with a dubious and retrograde regime of intellectual property law should be a far lower priority.