Copyright for Kids

The Entertainment Software Association is aiming an anti-piracy ad at kindergarteners. Talk about starting early!

Here are some interesting comments by a professor from Perdue about copyright and fair use. He focuses in part on the recent lawsuits from the recording industry against individuals for illegal downloading. Whether you agree or disagree with the professor's views, it will get you thinking. Be sure to click on the useful embedded links.

Some Comments on Copyright and on Fair Use by Professor Eugene Spafford

Copyright Chart for Teachers

Here is a great 2 page chart to help educators evaluate copyright issues in various contexts.

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers

Copyright on NPR

If you missed the Morning Edition story about Fair Use and Copyright on Monday, here is a link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10040628

From Soup to Nuts: Copyright, Social Networking Technologies, and Electronic Surveillance

From the Educause Midwest Regional Conference in March. You can read the text of a speech on a variety of issues including digital copyright. Below is a copy of the abstract from the websites

"Abstract:

This session will survey a number of current issues of interest to higher education IT such as developments in the digital copyright arena, the present and future of social networking technologies (from the law and policy perspectives), and electronic surveillance five years since the passage of the Patriot Act (from a security-privacy perspective)."

Privacy versus Intellectual Property:Detection Methods Used by Copyright Holders

I recently mentioned in a copyright presentation that the web has made it much easier for people to catch your copyright violations. And there are armies of people out there trying to catch you. Here is an interesting paper on just how they go about it.

Privacy versus Intellectual Property:Detection Methods Used by Copyright Holders

Another Copyright law in the works

Florida Representative Ric Keller has introduced the Curb Illegal Downloading on College Campuses Act of 2007. This act would enable the US Department of Education to introduce and expand anti-piracy efforts on campuses.

A good use of taxpayers dollars? You decide. Here's a link to a blogger who thinks not.

Another good copyright summary

If you have students post to forums, usenets, listservs, blogs, etc, it might be useful for them to read a copyright warning from such a source. Here is a useful debunking of several copyright myths in plain language. Its location on a sports forum might make it more accessible to students.

Notice to Everyone posting

Students protect their copyright

You may have heard of Turnitin.com, a service designed to catch plagiarism. Many schools subscribe to the service. They check a paper against a huge database of other papers to see if the work is original or not. Well, a few students whose work became part of that database have sued Turnitin.com for violation of their copyright. Interesting stuff.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070330-high-schoolers-turn-in-plagiarism-screeners-for-copyright-infringement.html

Math videos on Google

Ok, this is not strictly related to copyright, but is pretty cool and you should know about it. Pearson education and Google have teamed up to make math videos available to the masses. You can link to these videos from your website or blackboard classroom and have the ability to provide great content that is no work for you. What could be better?

Well, it could be better if it were all free - students can purchase the lectures for 99 cents to $3.99 for lectures and textbook chapters. There are some free lectures available as well.

These kinds of lectures can be especially useful for folks who have math components in their non-math classes and need some way for the folks who need extra help to get it without taking up class time.

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-22-2007/0004551474&EDATE=