[caption id="attachment_96" align="alignright" width="306"]
Pirate loot[/caption]My history as a pirate began many years earlier and I feel it is finally time to confess. Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have recorded hundreds of albums on cassette tape; I have bought bootleg LPs; ripped CDs; torrented music and movies. As I have moved to new destinations around the world, I have quickly learned where the illegal DVDs are sold and how the local authorities tolerate the trade.
Nor in my work have I been scrupulous. I have downloaded videos and music from YouTube; used photos without attribution; uploaded past exam papers to the public Web. I have done these things for what I thought was the benefit of my students. I turned a blind eye to colleagues who did the same; in fact I taught them the mantra: Everything is acceptable in the pursuit of educating young minds which is a sacred task. I didn't try to find out what the rules actually were; I assumed they were complex and inconvenient. I was confident that I wouldn't get into trouble. When a bounty hunter working for the IB got some of the exam papers taken down, I shrugged.
There may have been more (did I mention the Converse All Stars that weren’t? The boxed set of The Wire?), but that's more or less the size of it. Amen. I did it because I could, because it was easier and because I got away with it.
As we are often quick to tell our students, it's not relevant whether other people are doing something wrong too. I wasn't trying to make money, I just repeated the mantra and carried on teaching my students. I have learned over the years that, whatever they say, in many cases, people are more motivated by the fear of being caught than ethical issues.
I have, at least, always been respectful of writers and have given credit for the words I have used. But, as members of society, we shouldn't just make up rules to suit our own prejudices. Even though there are cases in life for civil disobedience, disregarding the intellectual property of other people is not one of them. The ownership of the products of one's creative labours is an important right and the fact that "in the digital world the one fact we can't escape is that every single use of culture produces a copy" (Lessig) does not mean that copyright is unimportant.
[caption id="attachment_95" align="alignleft" width="355"]
Licensed under Creative Commons by Silvia Tolisano[/caption]Surprise, surprise, it's not actually that complicated. Clever explainers like Larry Lessig and Silvia Tolisano have helped me to understand what I need to know about Creative Commons and why it is important. Lessig is a modern-day hero who has applied his creative legal mind to the new situation where culture embraces the remix. Tolisano (left) has provided a superb and useful summary of the precise recipes we can employ for almost every situation we find ourselves in. Inspired by their work, I am contrite and I shall perform three immediate actions.
In the past, my attributions have been inconsistent, but now I am going back through my writings (at least on this blog) to put things right.
Secondly, for some time I have been creating my own images to illustrate my blogs and presentations. I shall begin to use Creative Commons licenses for these artifacts to make clear the re-use I am happy to accept.
Lastly, I shall delete the pages on my old website which the "anti-piracy" man working for IBO has failed to find. It doesn't matter that the papers are old, freely available elsewhere and useful to teachers and students, nor that my goal is purely educational, the IBO has a right to keep them to itself if it wishes. We can't pick and choose.
So, why are our students bad at respecting copyright? There are various obvious reasons (such as a lack of modelling from their teachers), but we should ask ourselves: "What is their incentive to observe others' intellectual property rights?" when being 'good' is inconvenient, time consuming and, in general, there are no adverse consequences if we're bad.
My colleague, Becky and I have discussed how best to instill this important attitude in our Grade 6 students. After explaining the mechanics of Creative Commons, we have set a task for the students to make their own creative work (a personal logo). At the end of the unit, they will all obtain their own Creative Commons license for the logo, making personal decisions about attribution, sharing and derivations. We are hoping that seeing themselves as creators with rights, they will more readily appreciate the rights of others.
Footnote: So I have put a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License on this blog (see below) which is the most permissive, only requiring attribution. it covers everything on the blog that is mine. I'd be very interested in any comments as to whether I have made a good choice and done the right thing (for example, what is that copyright sign doing there?).
No comments:
Post a Comment