Copyright Week

Today is the start of Copyright Week, as sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a host of other digitally interested organizations such as Creative Commons and Wikimedia, as well as other organizations interested in more open information such as the American Library Association. Here is a press release on the start of it. 

Whether or not you follow along this week, you should be aware that even as the Internet has made information more openly available than ever before in human history, many interests, specifically Hollywood, are pushing to make information increasingly protected behind copyright law. Congress has a tendency to want to listen more to Hollywood than well, common sense, so copyright law is only becoming more strict. Schools are sort of left in the middle of this and the result is that many teachers and students are technically criminals for copyright violations.  

If you want a basic introduction to copyright and education, here is a short article I did last year on it from T.H.E. Journal. 

Comments

[Joel VerDuin]

I wonder if you might comment on a situation that we deal with in schools frequently around copyright. It deals with the public performance exemption in copyright law. See: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/110

Under this exemption, we generally allow the use of legally obtained video (purchased or rented DVDs as an example) to be used in face-to-face instruction.

More recently, Netflix streaming subscriptions have come into question. What seems to be different in the case of a legally obtained account, is that an individual agreed to use the service only for personal use. Many colleges and universities seem to wrestle with this as well and many policies seem to prohibit the use of Netflix.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Joel A. VerDuin
Chief Technology / Information Officer
Anoka-Hennepin School District, MN