Teaching Copyright

With the rise of social networking and a culture of sharing, it is important for teachers and students to learn about the legal uses of materials. Some may want to fight for more openness to improve creativity, while others may want to fight for more restriction to protect and preserve authors' works. Debating copyright in class can provide students an opportunity to understand the positions involved and internalize the concepts. There are many open resources to aid in the teaching of copyright.

For information about teaching copyright see any of the following:

• Teaching Copyright http://www.teachingcopyright.org/ a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation"Teaching Copyright provides lessons and ideas for opening your classroom up to discussion, letting your students express their ideas and concerns, and then guiding your students toward an understanding of the boundaries of copyright law."
• The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age A Foundational White Paper
• Doctorow, C. (June 29, 2010). Copyright best practices for communications scholars, BoingBoing.

Implications of Copyright: Copyright Infringement

For years large companies have been suing individuals for peer to peer sharing. What they have done is criminalize many of today's youth. Has it been successful?
According to Wendy Davis in a July 15, 2010 article in Media Post, the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) have admitted that suing individuals for sharing music on peer-to-peer networks has been unprofitable and they will no longer sue individuals. Attorney Ray Beckerman contends that the RIAA spent $16 million in 2008 on legal fees and only won $400,000 from copyright infringers. Between 2006 and 2007 legal fees and investigations cost $47 million and only recouped $1 million. Some of the lawsuits have been against companies like LimeWire but 18,000 individual file-sharers have been sued between 2003-2008. Even if the RIAA are no longer pursuing individuals, there are still ongoing cases with individuals like Joel Tanenbaum and Jamie-Rasset.

Companies like YouTube take down videos which they see as infringement and many times examples of fair use are mistakenly taken down.

In the 2010 case between YouTube and Vicaom over copyright infringement, YouTube won legal protection under the safe harbor section of the DMCA.(Digital Millennium Copyright Act) Viacom believed that YouTube knew about copy infringement and made money from it.
YouTube’s statement:

"Today, the court granted our motion for summary judgment in Viacom’s lawsuit with YouTube. This means that the court has decided that YouTube is protected by the safe harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against claims of copyright infringement. We’re extremely gratified by this decision and the now established judicial consensus that online services like YouTube are immune from liability when they work cooperatively with copyright holders to help them protect their rights online.
This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other. We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that millions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world."
Posted by Kent Walker, Vice President and General Counsel, Google

Hitler Reacts to the Hitler parodies being removed from YouTube

(Attention: Contains swear words!)

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