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Speaker: Copyright Must Change

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  • tim kong,

    I went back to check a youtube video I had used in my class last year - to introduce Rudyard Kipling's poem "If" - it screened on BBC - was read by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The link I had is now removed, due to a copyright claim by IMG Media

    http://www.youtube.com/v/jDC_S4zTGyY

    There are other links with the same content - I wonder how long I can rely on them to be there.

    I would argue that using that video clip is fair use - it has a purpose, in relation to the lesson I was teaching. It's 2 minutes, 7 seconds long. It's not an entire broadcast. Are IMG Media claiming the copyright to Rudyard Kipling's content? Or video footage of Federer and Nadal? Or to the audio recording of Federer and Nadal?

    If I use a DV camera to record the clip, or do a screen capture, am I still breaking copyright? What would the MPAA say?

    Can I read Kipling's poem "If" out loud? In a Swiss or Spanish accent?

    I'm confused.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 153 posts Report Reply

  • Rob Stowell,

    AFAIK and IANAL! but apart from the photocopying, none of the things you describe sound like they would be against the current law, in an educational context.
    As far as youtube goes, that's diffeent. I don't think it's valid to argue that everything ever made should be on youtube, just because it's handy. Though it sometimes seems as as everything is on youtube...
    I agree the uncertainty is unsettling. But surely you're not really thinking you can't read aloud to students?
    Fighting the real battles is tough enough, without fighting chimera and goblins in our nightmares...

    Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report Reply

  • tim kong,

    I agree the uncertainty is unsettling. But surely you're not really thinking you can't read aloud to students?

    Definitely not - sorry - should have added a <sarcasm> tag to that bit - my point being, I'm not sure where or why the copyright claim is being applied to the piece of video - what part of the content is being claimed. There's nothing to tell you - so you kind of have to make assumptions.

    As you said Rob - it's the not knowing what the legislation requires that's onerous. And if the only and easiest way to avoid the consequences of legislation would be to not use digital media - that would be a sad day.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 153 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    And if the only and easiest way to avoid the consequences of legislation would be to not use digital media - that would be a sad day.

    well there's sourcing the material legally and buying it with department budgets.
    That would ensure that you didn't have to rely on youtube vids.
    then the only issue you'd need to deal with is playing particular extracts from said material. if scene selection wasn't working for you you'd need to extract it via the telesync option described as it seems (and understandably so) that they don't want to dismantle their working copy protection.

    As Rob said you're well within copyright laws on most of your cited examples, and yes you are right, its can be presented in a complicated way sometimes and is often not well explained, but it is knowable.

    one of the problems I see is that it is easy to work up a hype over this stuff through simple misunderstanding. Many of your examples of possible problems are common myths.
    You're certainly not alone in that though, many people who should understand it better still march those misconceptions out to wind up a backlash.

    I'll quickly try to address your examples.

    photocopying. covered by the percentage rule mentioned a few pages ago.

    youtube. - if its up there, use it. copyright owners will get it taken down if they object. that system works well at present. playing it in class. that's public performance. no copyright infringement. covered by school public performance agreements.

    playing ipod - public performance. no copyright infringement. covered by school public performance agreements.

    playing full dvds. public performance. no copyright infringement. covered by school public performance agreements.

    clips from dvd. - using the original dvds using scene selection - public performance. no copyright infringement. covered by school public performance agreements.

    extracting from dvd. that's where it gets complicated. both technically as you need a lot more skill to achieve this, and legally. There are 3 ways to solve this issue.
    1- is for the school to get a machine hat allows for direct timecode access to scenes on a dvd. you just type in the bit you want to play and it plays it. (do these machines exit?)
    2- is to dismantle the copy protection.
    3- is to telesync the bits you want. this doesn't have to yield shitty results but it does require a one generation copy. ie it is not the same quality as the original. with bluray and a hi def screen and camera it could be really good though so I don't see why the MPAA thinks its a good concession.

    for your legally purchased material lying around I personally think that format shifting is acceptable, its certainly been practiced for many years as I was employed full time doing exactly that for a university. It was never hidden. but if your concerned about quality then sourcing a remastered version is the way to go.

    re schools high speed networks. its not the hi speed part that's at fault, its the lack of monitoring that they are being used for legal university purposes. The central library in chch allows for wifi use. it shuts down large file transfers automatically and disconnects suspicious activity outside of normal browsing. if they can exercise such control over their network how hard can it be for a university to do it.

    the warning about peer to peer is correct. bogus files make up a large proportion of bit torrent files. these files direct you to bogus sites to "unlock" the file. for the uninitiated its easy to get caught out and they do lead to sites that try to get you personal details. porn files are mislabled as movie files,
    all of those things are risks for the uninitiated. for the seasoned bit torrenter they're no problem though. It may seem over stating it but it depends which ball park you fall in. From my experience uni staff mostly fall into the uninitiated pile. present company excluded of course.
    I don't think fair use extents to supporting downloading copyright material. I think it was more meant to extend to manipulating material you have legally obtained.

    your students views were interesting. the creative commons book was a simple misunderstanding on their part and easily corrected.

    and thanks for stepping up and discussing your real world needs. really appreciated it. there isn't as much to worry about as some like to make out. I guess the real issue is making it simple and easy to work within the system and understand it. That's all about education though, and one of the biggest failings of the system, ie not clearly and simply conveying these concepts.
    In copyrights defense though many of the commentators to the negative are not quick to get people in to explain it all. its a more controversial story to have half truths floating out there.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Tim, thanks for sharing in such detail about the challenge "to meet our students in the world they're in and help them make connections with that knowledge." It's a most honourable kaupapa and (as on previous threads) I am impressed with your dedication. Who needs the threat of your school being sued or having its internet connection cut off because some would prefer to treat your students as if they lived in the past.

    You may be aware that the concept of "fair use" from the USA is not part of New Zealand copyright law, so many of its protections that you'll read about do not apply here. You will know better than most of us that the situation in our schools also differs from our universities, not the least being the level of resource and expert support staff.

    Professional education networks should be able to help clarify your options, and there have been some relevant stories in pcworld. In any case you would be well advised not to take anything here as solid legal advice, particularly from those whose response to any challenge about facts is personal abuse.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    By the way, does the curriculum contain anything these days about the positive value of intellectual property, rather than scaremongering?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • tim kong,

    Rob, robbery and sacha - thank you for the responses. I must admit, I was initially more bemused than anything else by the MPAA clip, and threw it into the mix more as an oddity. Your questions of me then set me to thinking about specifics in my job - and it was a useful bit of thinking and reflecting for me over the weekend.

    As the teacher responsible for the ICT curriculum at my school, I'm nominally responsible for keeping abreast of these issues - but my chosen digital challenge this term is to teach myself OS X server, and install and start trialling Moodle for our school intranet/LMS.

    Sacha - thanks for the heads up on the "fair use" terms. I've taken to reading some of the details on http://www.copyright.co.nz - and some of that there is a challenge. more to chew on I guess. Things like this:

    Do schools have to have a licence to provide copies of material from published works to students?

    The Copyright Act 1994 limits the amount certain educational institutions can copy for students to encourage copyright licensing. Certain educational institutions are permitted to make multiple copies of up to 3% or 3 pages of a work for students for educational purposes. This copying may not exceed 50% of a work which means that if the whole work is being copied within the 3 page limit (for example a poem, short story or article from a periodical), then copying must be limited to 50% of the work.

    I wonder if that means I'm back to only copying half of Rudyard Kiplings "If" for my classroom handouts?

    In regards to the curriculum, there's nothing specifically in it about intellectual property, AFAIK. But you can have a look here:

    http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/

    You could build a series of lessons/unit plan based around the social sciences or technology objectives - particularly with regard to the Key Competencies of 'Thinking' and 'Participating and Contributing'. Maybe the CFF people could do that, as a counterpoint to the NZFACT view - as I've said the quality of the arguments is pretty unsophisticated at present - and I think both sides are misunderstood.

    robbery - there's often a massive surplus of materials and purchased content in primary schools filling shelves and is rarely used. The much maligned "Dog Box" arrived a couple of weeks ago, and has been cataloged and put on a shelf. woohoo! A lot of analog ICT resources are posters or instruction books that show step-by-step methods of instruction. Not something I'm keen on investing in.

    The web has a wealth of resources, much of it legally available - either via creative commons or freely/opensource. Some of it is just pdf versions of worksheets, but some of it is challenging and powerful. One of the new skills that teachers need, as I said upthread, is to sift through the masses of data available - and work to integrate the good stuff into their lessons. It's a tough ask, with a large percentage of our teachers not digitally savvy, with laptops and the vagaries of Windows networking - let alone digital/DRM content issues.

    All that said - there's some amazing work being done by primary and secondary schools around NZ - and groups like Derek Wenmoth's CORE-ed offer up some fantastic support for education.

    For what it's worth - the new Anne Tolley-approved National Standards arrived today - in draft format, so it might be all change again.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 153 posts Report Reply

  • Mark Harris,

    Waikanae • Since Jul 2008 • 1343 posts Report Reply

  • tussock,

    bogus files make up a large proportion of bit torrent files.

    That's rather like saying heroin makes up a large proportion of marijuana baggies, what with neither being at all true. OK, don't download dialers or other trojans from teh www, and a torrent of a passworded archive file is just a zombie in waiting, but they're all pretty rare these days.
    If you're paranoid, noscript is your friend, and don't grab anything that hasn't already had a couple hundred suckers try it out first (it's better seeded then anyway). Everyone who asks for your password is a crook. Etc.


    Tim Long: thank you for enhancing the thread, sir.

    Kids are still believing everything they hear from anonymous authority figures? Damn shame. Just remind them, the greatest trick of the internet is the hyperlink, http. Want to present something when you're not sure of copyrights? Link to where you found it with a summary review, and have the school use proper caching and detailed whitelists (including for streaming data like youtube) to let all the kids see it at once without exploding your bandwidth bills.

    If you can't find it online to link, it's probably because you're not supposed to copy it. As to IMG and the like paying someone to issue takedowns on their behalf, they're just engaged in a rent seeking ploy against youtube at the moment. Most of the notices have no real legal backing, it's just easier for users to repost the clip somewhere else than get lawyers involved.

    Since Nov 2006 • 611 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    what with neither being at all true.

    go to a bit torrent site like this one https://isohunt.com/
    search for a new release movie and look at the comments and votes for the file. minus means a reported bogus file. nothing means unknown. if you don't know to read the comments you may make a mistake. if there are no comments yet you run the risk of bogus.

    we were talking about the uninitiated university or high school teacher.
    if you don't know what you're doing you'll get a bogus file which tells you to go to a website to unlock your film and then who knows.

    They're not going to all be seasoned pros mate. the warning is valid considering who they're talking to. you may well be giving the average school teacher too much credit for internet know how.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Canadian copyright violation claims dodgy, says Pat Pilcher.

    ...the piracy numbers quoted by the Canadian Business Software Alliance (BSA) were based on a hunch rather than any actual surveys of the Canadian public.

    It turns out that the BSA (and the research company who was commissioned to create the report) used educated guesswork that appears not be based on any actual data.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    I was thinking of a local equivalent to this EFF resource for teachers (ta, #danjite).

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    And Cory Doctorow's mom (who happens to be an ECE specialist) points us to the Educational Origami wiki to discuss questions like:

    "What does teaching and learning look like in the 21st Century? What about 21st Century learning spaces? How can Bloom's Taxonomy be applied to the Digital world?

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • jon_knox,

    From BBC Radio 4 today the Performing Rights Society talking about where they're at- starts at 40 mins 10 seconds.

    The Guardian on the Ordinance Survey/free data story/series last week.

    The Guardian also had a piece last week on the costs of freedownloads.

    Belgium • Since Nov 2006 • 464 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    Derek Clarke, the head of South Africa's mapping agency, the CDSM – which moved from a "paid for" to a "free" data model in 2000 through a government edict

    when they say free do they mean paid for by govt through taxes?

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    could have sworn I posted a link to an international torrent site which promotes the downloading of new zealand content in the form of the tv series outrageous fortune, for those of you who think it doesn't effect us here.
    I take it proof in the form of a link isn't cool. fair enough, but I did post it.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Saw (very belatedly) an interview with Lawrence Lessig at the Colbert Report, perhaps it was covered here. Hard to say, the internal search feature sucks...

    Anyhow, here's the link. Came across as a humourless twerp who can't handle his ideas being challenged, in my humble estimation.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Russell Brown,

    Anyhow, here's the link. Came across as a humourless twerp who can't handle his ideas being challenged, in my humble estimation.

    It might be fairer to say he's an engaging lecturer and writer and a terrible interview subject. I thought the interview I did with him was okay, until I saw it. It was really dull.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    An engaging lecturer and writer he may be, but you've got to be able to function when you don't have full use of the pulpit, surely, otherwise one might question the validity of your ideas. He couldn't handle Colbert's ribbing *in character*, which was rather odd - he was really just serving him up opportunities to argue his case.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    He couldn't handle Colbert's ribbing *in character*, which was rather odd

    that was really really funny, and revealing.
    loved colbert writing his own name on lessig's book and calling it his own. brilliant.

    70% of kids illegally download? what's he doing bandying about those statistics without an approved source sited?

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    70% of kids illegally download? what's he doing bandying about those statistics without an approved source sited?

    Repeat...no-body has ever quibbled with that, but we're all still wondering where the evidence that backs the vast losses allegedly caused by this. It seems to be MIA.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    And I suspect Lessig counts as his own source by now.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • robbery,

    Repeat...no-body has ever quibbled with that,

    I'm pretty sure that everything has been "quibbled" about simon. its 104 pages long!!!

    but we're all still wondering where the evidence that backs the vast losses allegedly caused by this

    Well lets see if we can follow this logic, if we take lessig at his word and 70% of kids are illegally downloading, would that not reasonably follow that they were consuming product which they were not legally purchasing. What that figure might equate to is up for you professionals to quibble over but I'm guessing its probably greater than $1.

    aside from that you'll have to question the guardian about where it gets its "facts" from.

    its hard to know who to trust in this world of liers and cheats,

    This sounds like one of your created death spirals and I refuse to be sucked into it, ......ow, go on then, maybe just one more.

    new zealand • Since May 2007 • 1882 posts Report Reply

  • Simon Grigg,

    Nope, never in 104 pages been quibbled about Rob. Nobody has ever denied that people download and vast amounts is downloaded.

    But there is no evidence of any vast loss to the industry caused by people stealing music. None. Myself I think there are losses but most of those are caused by changed buying habits (and there there is a mountain of evidence to support that, some posted here over the 104 pages).

    Just wondering where the 'facts' are in that Guardian story relating to the recording industry. It's a bunch of opinions.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Nobody has ever denied that people download and vast amounts is downloaded.

    Mark quibbled about that plenty, actually. He was willing to accept the number of files legally downloaded and paid for but not accept an estimate of the number of shared downloads.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

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