Coyright Conference

Star Trek fans will look forward to the upcoming copyright conference at Ball State University in Indiana on April 11. The conference title is "Digital Trek: To boldly explore copyright in teaching and learning".

Documentaries and Fair Use

Here is an interesting article about fair use and documentaries.

"Documentary films are an important source of education, commentary and criticism," Media/Professional president Leib Dodell said. "Rigidly requiring licensees or releases in all cases does not give filmmakers the flexibility to take advantage of fair use in appropriate situations. This initiative makes fair use work in the real world of independent filmmakers."

Documakers getting aid on Fair Use, The Hollywood Reporter, February 23, 2007

For additional information on this topic, see this post from the Info/Law blog.

International view of US Copyright

The BBC published an interesting article today, US copyright lobby out-of-touch by Michael Geist, a Canadian professor at the University of Ottawa.

Copyright Tutorial

Western Washington University has a handy interactive Copyright Tutorial if you'd like to test your knowledge in this area.

Copies of Out of Print Materials

Here is some interesting commentary on the use of old and out of print materials. - http://wordwright.blogspot.com/2007/01/loss-but-not-loss.html

Attempt to educate kids about copyright fails

OK, so I know this happened in Canada and I know that it is about educating kids and not our audience of adults, but I thought this article about a failed attempt to educate kids about copyright was quite interesting. An effort to educate kids as early as first grade met with such huge opposition that it shut down altogether, determining that there was no way to make everyone happy. I could really see this happening in the US.

It should also make you wonder - what are you doing to educate your students about copyright?

http://www.slyck.com/story1396.html

Copyright and the web

If you are curious about copyright issues as they relate to your web content, you should have a look at this website, From Now On. The linked article discusses several of the issues of copyright and the web.

http://www.fno.org/jun96/legal.html

Also, save March 26 on your calendar. At 1:00 we'll be doing a copyright workshop directly aimed at websites and online instruction. Keep your eye on your e-mail for additional details.

Fair Use Meets Free Speech on Campus

A student at Binghamton University in New York created a parody website on the Campus web server and quickly lost access to her website, her e-mail and her research as punishment. The student argued that the parody fell into the protection of Fair Use. The University claims institutional rules were broken.

Pipe Dream on the Web