I’ve been meaning to write something about Creative Commons for a while now. This post in particular is inspired by a piece written by Jim McDermott about education technologists petitioning the MPAA to back and amendment to the Digital Media Copyright Act (DMCA). Apparently, the MPAA thinks it’s okay to use copyrighted media for educational purposes so long as you jump through a series of needless hoops first. Jim explains:
I found this article on Boing Boing (via Engadget of course) that says that the Electronic Fronties Foundation is petitioning for change in the Digital Millenial Copyright Act to permit educational uses of media clips. The MPAA responded and said that it would be OK for you to use video clips as long as you recorded it yourself aka set up a video camera and recorded a flat screen TV. They even went as far as to put together a video demonstration of how this can be done.
Encapsulating creative content in unnecessary bureaucracy has not been a technique that’s worked for the music industry and I don’t think it’s going to turn out much better for the MPAA. In the mean time, however, what’s a teacher to do? A teacher could ignore the licensing restrictions, but education is supposed to be an industry with a relatively strong ethical backbone. In my opinion, ignoring the licensing is taking the easy way out. There are alternatives; I believe teachers have been presented with an opportunity to talk about copyrights and intellectual property with their students.
Traditionally, we’ve been told that there are two types of licenses: public domain and “All Rights Reserved.” Neither of those work particularly well for people who want to share their work. Creative Commons allows creators of content to reserve some rights (such insisting that the work be attributed to them or that if you use their work then you must also share your work) and adds a middle ground between “All Rights Reserved” and public domain. .
With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here. For those new to Creative Commons licensing, we’ve prepared a list of things to think about. If you want to offer your work with no conditions or you want to certify a work as public domain, choose one of our public domain tools (Source: Creative Commons: Choose a License).
I’m not going to waste screen real estate rehashing what the Creative Commons website does a good job in explaining. Educators need to get behind alternative licensing frameworks such as Creative Commons licensing. As teachers—who have been engaging in a common law version of Creative Commons for decades—we need to not only work to expand the popularity of open licensing but use it as an opportunity to teach students how to play nicely with other people’s intellectual property and contribute to the creative economy.
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Photograph by Lloyd Budd.
