10-6 Online Assignments

Hi,

For this week, we'll be reviewing Copyright issues and Fair Use for Educators. I know this is a review for most of you, but since we are discussing computers and technology in the classroom it's an important topic to discuss.

Please read the following three articles this week and post to your blog (question below) by Friday so I can respond to you over the weekend:
A very quick overview of copyright myths:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
A longer read on the true cost to teachers and educators who misunderstand copyright and media literacy issues:
http://myclass.nl.edu/tie/Final_CSM_copyright_report.pdf
Finally, a very interesting read about the insanity of copyright law on a digital revolution (law vs. reality):
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-2003/feature_zittrain_julaug03.msp


After the review of copyright, in your blog reflect and answer the following question: The Internet, Web 2.0 applications that allow user created materials to be posted, social media sites such as Facebook, that allow for easy, yet illegal, distribution of copyright protected materials, allow others to “re-purpose” this content. These newly created materials, such as (mashups), combine multiple forms of content into one stream or a ‘new’ work. A basic example would be if someone takes 3 copyright protected images and mashes them together to create a new image, but the previous pieces are easily recognized for their original work. The question is: is this legal based on fair use?

Does the new creator have copyright protection? Who then really owns the ‘new’ version of the content since it was based on previous works? Does the creator of the old content own it? Can someone even illegally obtain and re-use the content for their own purposes and then claim copyright protection?

What do you think and why?

Cite information from Copyright law or Fair Use or the readings to support your position.