Teaching copyright to schoolkids is a. EFF gives copyright recent innovation special lead one spurred in large part by. The fantastical growth and amazing ease. Of digital copying—both legal and illegal. Most such programs have been drawn up. By rightsholders in a not-so-subtle attempt to bolster their business models. For instance Think First . Copy Later: Respecting Creative Ownership” may have some educational value, but the title makes clear that this is not the kind of dispassionate material that belongs in our nation’s classrooms.
EFF gives copyright Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a curriculum
of its own in an effort to “give students the real story about their digital rights and responsibilities on the Internet and beyond.” But if the rightsholder-produced material stresses the “responsibilities” side of the equation a bit too heavily, the EFF leans predictably the other way.
Teaching Copyright. It makes clear that students should not infringe copyright, but this is secondary to extended discussions about the VCR, the photocopier, audio cassettes, and blank CDs—technologies that each posed challenges to copyright holders.
In a classroom exercise on P2P music sharing the class is asked
to consider the case of a “12-year-old girl in Toledo” who is exporting phone data from facebook lead forms file-sharing. Found the files on a site that was free to access, but there were no warning signs that the bands didn’t authorize the site. She’s a huge fan of these bands—she owns all of their CDs and just wanted to hear the new songs.”
As for the bands she downloaded, we learn that one wants her to pay for the music but the other “has a different perspective and supports music file-sharing technology, even encouraging fans to download its latest album of MP3s for free or for whatever they want to pay. Band B believes P2P file-sharing helps promote its music and encourages an even wider spectrum of music to be heard.”
Needless to say these are not the sort of perspectives stressed in
“Think First, Copy Later.”
The material is all accurate, as is the curricula of most rightsholders. But it’s striking just how different the emphases are in these materials.
This is absolutely true, and absolutely important. But the material glosses quickly over the absolutely epic levels of infringement taking place on P2P networks. Perhaps those are just “fair use,” perhaps they should be monetized through a blanket license, but they are the major concern of rightsholders and seem at least worth discussing in more depth.
Instead the EFF curriculum suggests that students read Cory Doctorow
Lawrence Lessig, or a paper united states business directory called “Why Would Thomas Jefferson Love Napster?”
Again, great ideas, but not necessarily a complete picture of a complex debate.
An included copyright quiz does make clear that copying entire chapter
of Harry Potter novels would not be fair use and that downloading one’s favorite music is likely copyright infringement. And the EFF perspective helpfully educates kids about Creative Commons licensing, fair use, and the public domain—topics that too often get short shrift in such material.
The stakes in the “curricula wars” are high, since states like California have now mandated copyright education in the classroom. Whoever writes the textbooks can influence what students will learn; even if it’s all technically correct, emphasis counts for a lot