Copyright

In the case of copyright, through my exploration I have learned a few things that I did not previously know. For example, I learned that fair use is nebulous area. When it comes to Parody, you can be fairly liberal with the amount that you use copyrighted material. A good example would be “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” which uses copyrighted material all the time, be it “The Today Show,” or “C-SPAN.” They can use anything for parody. I also learned that basically if you are using something for educational purposes, you have much more latitude.

I do NOT believe that copyright laws are fair as they are currently written. Why? When the Constitution was written, the goal of copyright was to protect the originator of the material for a reasonable time period. But now, thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, also known pejoratively as the "Mickey Mouse Forever Act," another twenty years was tacked onto the already long term of 50 years’ protection to copyright after the death of the creator. Imagine someone writes a popular book in the year 1900, but lives to the year 1955. Add 70 years to that, and a work that may have been culturally significant then loses its impact. Only the most valuable of work will benefit from falling into the public domain. It’s completely unreasonable. 20-30 years is reasonable after the creation of the product.

To enforce copyright, I will first and foremost enforce a ban on plagiarism. I know that they do not necessarily overlap, but the concept is the same. When you take something wholesale without citing it, you are, in effect, stealing. If I create an atmosphere in the classroom where students are trained not to take information “willy-nilly” then they may be less likely to snatch it from the Internet. When it comes to the use of actual copyrighted material in the classroom, fair use allows it if it is considered for educational use. I will also stress that for my students.

But this whole thing touches on something deeper. Young people don’t understand the concept of copyright. Let me explain. They get the concept, but in a world of outdated policies dealing with intellectual property in the electronic realm, it is so easy to appropriate, remix, and learn from each other, it’s hard to justify copyright in the same way as it has been traditionally treated. Indeed, because of increase of knowledge is spiraling faster and faster, it’s necessary to actually destroy the current form of copyright. Students are way ahead of us in this respect. We should follow them.