Copyrights in my classroom.

[elderbob Brannan]

In light of what you have read, heard and seen about copyrights, how will you change the way use materials in your classroom?

[elderbob Brannan]

What a great week of discussion about copyrights. We have had a couple of speakers, Karen Ellis and Dr. James Frankel, who both had strong opinions about copyrights. We had some really good discussion in the forums related to this course. I hosted a great weekend on copyright issues over at Knowplace. And finally, someone sent me a link to a wonderful article by Cory Doctorow regarding a sensible approach to content creation and ownership. Doctorow is a sort of realistic voice rising above of the fray of mumbling and grumbling about whose that is, and who can use it, and what it can be used for. It's something I have already said I advocated....application of the golden rule...do unto others....

Here's a short quote, but take the time to read the whole thing....I guarantee you will find yourself nodding your head in the affirmative.

"We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in copyright, such as fair dealing and fair use. Instead we need to establish a new copyright regime that reflects the age-old normative consensus about what's fair and what isn't at the small-scale, hand-to-hand end of copying, display, performance and adaptation.

A diverse and extremely sensible group of people are doing just this: the Access to Knowledge (A2K) treaty is a proposal from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to set out the rights and responsibilities of archivists, educators and people who provide access to disabled users of information.

The drafting group - which is open to the general public - includes representatives of creators' groups (tellingly, no one from the corporations that buy creators' works have taken part), disabled rights groups, technical standards bodies, civil rights groups, even medical rights groups like Médecins Sans Frontières.

A2K is at the top of the WIPO agenda. It's the first breath of sanity in the copyright debate. Let's hope it's not the last one."