Desperado: The Copyright Bandits

“We’re all bandits because we can’t afford not to be,” noted an administrator. This comment summed up my attempts at broaching the topic of copyright at yesterday’s district PD session on integrating Web 2.0 tools. When our technology leader asked for questions, he minimalized my concerns about the wholesale cutting and pasting of editorial cartoons on the Social Studies lead teacher’s wiki he was using as an exemplar. This made me squirm a bit.

This squirming comes from a decade long frustration with Alberta Education’s inability to post online the written Social Studies Diploma Exams complete with visual prompts. While posting the old exams without them is pretty much useless, at least you had the questions and text prompts. So I went to the AB ED website just now to show you this and imagine my shock when now there is absolutely nothing for the written Social Studies or English exams there now! Just this suspicious logo and disclaimer:

Unfortunately, it is not possible to gain permission for electronic publication of all the source material on the English and Social Studies Diploma Examinations. Consequently, we cannot post complete examinations for these subjects.

Who is Quest A and where have my old diploma exams copies gone?

A week ago before our class discussions, it would not even have occurred to me to be concerned about such matters. But now I am both confused and indignant- a dangerous combination!

So let’s re-group.

The Problem

The issue here for educators is one of confusion. The wasteful copyright war, according to Palfrey & Gasser (2008), is a “war of litigation involving content owners, Digital Natives and technologists (and) has become a defining feature of the digital age (149).” The media industries have misunderstood that the law and the social norms of file sharing are not in sync. The tendency is for copyright laws to become more restrictive, representing a shift of power away from the public interest and back into the hands of rights holders (149).

The problem, say Palfrey & Gasser is that the consequences of criminalizing more file sharing behaviors, will be reduced creativity, privacy, and innovation of digital users. They argue that if lawmakers and judges adopt a wait and see stance, the market forces will solve the problems of P2P distribution. “Market dynamics are forcing the industry to adjust to the new rules of cyberspace (150).” iTunes is an excellent example of such adaptation.

But Canadian copyright laws with regards to digital media are also out of date.

The Council of Ministers of Education of Canada (2008) made a statement “Education organizations are asking the federal government to change the existing copyright law in order to make it clear that educational use of publicly available Internet material is not an infringement of copyright.”

In this climate of uncertainty, educators’ response has been to pull back and restrict student access of digital media out of fear.

The (American) National Council of Teachers of English notes that schools and professional associations have been unhelpful in this regard and tend to err on the side of caution.

Renee Hobbs (2009) argues that uncertainties over copyright misunderstandings have led to restricting student access to digital materials compromising their development of critical thinking and communication skills. Her work on Copyright Confusion is Shortchanging our Students (2008) is another good place to unravel the effects on student access, which creates in effect another Digital Divide!

Hobbs' (2008) research led to the development of a code of use for educators that clarifies how fair use applies to the most common situations where media literacy educators make use of copyrighted materials in their work.
This video provides a framework.

A massive Canadian federal government website explains the current intricacies of intellectual property and copyright and Fair Dealings. A good primer for the Canadian context is http://www.cippic.ca/copyright-law/ and an interesting Canadian debate can be found http://www.faircopyrightforcanada.ca/. But educators need a link that translates this information for teacher practice.

And while this is a noble beginning to separate American and Canadian contexts, my research this week revealed that countries sign international agreements that may not reflect their domestic policies. Currently Canada is engaged in a secret global copyright treaty that consumer groups fear will allow internet providers to spy on customers and criminalize their behaviors. (CBC, Jan 26, 2010) Within this larger framework however, we educators need to sort through what impacts school digital media use. This is where we need to be concerned about copyright and intellectual property within the context of digital citizenship.

Implications for Teaching and Learning

The Alberta Teachers' Association has some teachers' tips for copyright but I had a hard time finding up-to-date information for Alberta teachers, which indicates the low profile of this issue.

Palfrey & Gasser (2008) see a critical need for educating digital natives about user rights and responsibilities but with a balanced approach that not only presents the industry’s concerns about exclusive rights and controls, but also about fair use, creative commons and educational use. Ribble (2008) supports the importance of bringing parents and teachers into this awareness while Lamb (2007) sees librarians playing a key role in this process. Hayes (2009) notes that these responses are framed by the understanding that creativity does not flower from a vacuum, rather it is along a continuum (3).

Our classmate Jackie created a handy wiki that clearly explains elements of these topics including Creative Commons.


Again, the NCTE Ning is a great place for teaching resources. If Alberta had a stand-alone CTS course in digital citizenship, for example, these materials could be useful. Perhaps this CTS course could become a graduation requirement course not unlike the present CALM course or perhaps this could be embedded into an expanded 5-credit CALM course.

As far as embedding copyright and intellectual property content into core subject teaching I am afraid it would require a huge awareness shift for teachers. It may have to begin with a few minutes slivered into every PD session on tech integration for example, as it is unlikely that people would attend a PD session on “copyright or intellectual property “ alone. The reason for this is that Alberta has phased out teacher librarians in the province and there are no visible local advocates. As one of my PD co-participants said in yesterday’s session, “The kids don’t really see the need for restrictions as they feel that since anything on the net is free and accessible they can just look it up-so they don't even see it as cheating.”

So where would I begin with my students?

Perhaps with the Social Studies old exam copyright hassles that began this blog. This could be a starting point for how copyright issues impact my students' ability to gain a Diploma Exam "advantage". Perhaps they will perceive this as a denial of their rights and raise enough indignation to make them curious.

And to make it personal, I could recount the story of the student who came to me this week looking to redo his entire Social 33 course.

“Why did you fail the diploma exam?” I asked him.
“Well, because they said I was cheating.”
“Oh really and how was that?”
“They said I copied stuff from the internet for my written essay response.”
“And so, did you?”
“Well just a little sentence…”


Resources

Palfrey, J. & Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital
natives. New York: Basic Books.

http://thecleversheep.blogspot.com/2009/02/creative-commons-chaos.html

http://mediaeducationlab.com/frequently-asked-questions
http://ncte2008.ning.com/

http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1420&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=549898