Afternoon Sessions

This afternoon we met at the Marriott in Times square, where I went to a session on intellectual property, after which we heard Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson speak. We them made the trip back across town to the convention center where we went to sessions on blogging and wikis as well as doing author studies via the internet.

below is some of the more relevant content that we collected.

Enjoy!


Fair use in the media and in education

Fair use balances the rights of owners with the rights of users to stimulate growth and ideas.

Considerations cannot be taken one by one; they must be looked at as a whole.

www.centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy

socialmedia@american.edu

all of the “rules” that we hear about are actually guidelines, not really rules. They are not actually LAW. They are a negotiation; an attempt to try to clarify what fair use would be .Fair use is actually flexible in its application, based upon use and where we are in time (ex. 1970 vs. 2007).

Kenneth Cruz


These guidelines are actually a narrowing of the law- they have done more harm than good because they are not the law and don’t really show a consensus of what educators actually do.

Some of these guidelines, as soon as they were created were rejected by major groups of educators. They were always considered a compromise.

Written by a group of well meaning people who carved out a deal thinking that they were helping educators, but they have actually confused people more.

Reality is that as soon as we create a set of rules they will be outdated. there are actually four factors and they need to be applied broadly on a case by case basis.

So, what is fair?
Merchants of Cool (video) freely available from the PBS website.

The four factors that determine fair use:
Purpose of the use
Extent of the use
Nature of the use
Effect of the use on the market

General case law in the last 15 years, it is no longer just a matter of looking at the four factors. Increasingly courts are saying that there is really one big question, the answer to which will determine the other four answers.
The” transformitiveness” of the use. Is the use a new application of an existing product for the same purpose

Or is it an added value purpose (repurposing)- making something completely new by using what is already available. In order to transform an existing work in this scenario you don’t have to change it in the traditional sense- you can just reframe it.

Example: a book publisher putting out a coffee table book of the greatful dead, some small but complete reproductions of artwork used in the early years of the band (Fillmore posters)- publisher tried to make a deal for the poster art and some tickets, couldn’t make a deal. The publisher decided to go ahead, BGP sued and it went up the chain of command in the courts. It was finally decided that the inclusion of the work was a reframing of it- using it for a new purpose. Thus it was fair use.

The publisher did not alter the artwork, but recontextualized the work for a retrospective. Thus they created a new purpose for the work.

Most use is not challenged in education because it is actually fair use and the authors don’t want to set a precedent (they already know that it is fair use and don’t want others to know).

REPURPOSING AS A CATALYST FOR DISCUSSION IN THE CLASS IS TRANSFORMATIVE

If you use a film for the purpose that it was intended then it is not fair use.
Section 110 paragraph 1 it is ok to display copyrighted works in connection with a lesson in education.
Works for major motion pictures that a teacher shows in class that are relevant to the subject matter that they are teaching.
Example- Monty Python and the Holy Grail at the end of the school year in the 7th grade.


Does not work for babysitting movies.

Music- when played for the purpose of teaching (example – exposure to culture) effectively repurposes the work
Example would be playing music for the kids while they are working.





Websites from one of the sessions on Wikis and blogging:
EduWikis:
http://educaionalwikis.wikispaces.com
Free sites:
http://wikispaces.com
PBWiki
http://pbwiki.com
Wet Paint:
www.wetpaint.com/category/education