Librarians: Fair Use Champions, or Grouchy Performance Rights Police?
Listening to many fellow librarians lately, I’ve been left wondering how and when we agreed to being shills for the movie & music industries.
I believe it’s my job to educate my students on fair use, plagiarism, copyright and the like. I do not believe it’s my job to ensure that the labels and studios are able to squeeze any possible penny out of any school or student that they can, or help them locate and prosecute young downloaders.
I must have been out of the room when they slipped that into my job description.
However, I do take this topic seriously and spend a good deal of time on it with my students. They learn the law and we have fruitful and provocative discussions concerning abuse of power, greed and the sometimes downright silliness that current copyright law encourages.
Here are two great new resources that cropped up this week on Boing Boing.
A site & curriculum:
Teaching copyright: Richard Esguerra registered the domain TeachingCopyright.org as a site for collecting curriculum materials for K-12 teachers who are being asked to explain copyright to their kids. Today, teachers are overwhelmed by slick, self-interested “curriculum” generated by the MPAA and their ilk, which presents a one-sided, inaccurate view of copyright. Richard produced some curriculum himself, and another student, Julianne Gale, supplemented his work with a brilliant lesson plan (pdf) for kids in grades 6-8.
And an out of this world video on Fair Use (yours to download. get it now, before Disney forces them to take it down.) Fair(y) Use Tale, using tiny cuts from many different Disney films mashed together to explain fair use.
Educators are constantly penalized and frustrated by restrictive copyright. Isn’t it our duty to protect Fair Use and encourage legislation that expands it? Why are we spending so much effort complaining about teachers who show films in class? Why don’t we focus more on how we can protect the rights of our teachers and students, rather than those of the corporations?
Amen!
I’m struggling with re-designing our district’s copyright course with the help of six or seven librarians. It’s been an interesting experience (for all of us, I think). I’m no fan of how our current copyright system works. We’re really focusing on CC options and real positivity- no calling anyone crooks, thieves etc.
Thanks for the links-
Tom
24 May 2007 at 3:07 pm
Woohoo! Many thanks for articulating that particular bit of biblioangst. With all respect to Tom, I’ve been doing a little research to prepare a media literacy class for the fall, and I think that identifying certain corporations as crooks and thieves is a fairly positive step.
I always begin the copyright lectures I am required to stage by informing whoever is listening that Robin Hood is one of my most fundamental role models. Many thanks for the link to the Fair(y) Use Tale — I can hardly wait to share it!
25 May 2007 at 12:45 pm
I’ve got no problem calling companies thieves, or bullies, or jerks, or all three in the case of Disney.
It was calling our students and teachers thieves that was, I felt, turning them off to the whole topic before we got started. I took our copyright training and after I was told I was a thief because I used multiple images from one website in my presentations I stopped listening.
I like the Robin Hood role. I’ve seen too many librarians swing the other way and feel they are a secret arm of the copyright police.
28 May 2007 at 10:07 pm