This week's blog topic was definitely interesting to learn about. I don't normally put much thought into copyright and fair use, so after watching some of the videos and reviewing some of the links, I was a little surprised at what I had learned. I think that this shows how much I am lacking in digital literacy and how the terms and conditions of copyright is often not clear. When I was in grade school, I learned to simply not copy other students' work or directly copy and paste entire sections from the internet. This was enforced by programs such as Turnitin. As multimedia became more prevalent, it isn't just text that you have to be aware of, but videos, pictures, and audio as well. I feel as if students nowadays are not as commonly aware about fair use of multimedia especially since it is so easy to copy/paste, download, or re-upload pretty much anything to and from the Internet.
One of the videos that caught my attention from the beginning was the one titled "Should "Happy Birthday" be Protected by Copyright? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzbSt0QG7mY&index=2&list=PLvzOwE5lWqhTbOCIFp_OxsN6nC-l20kMT). This appealed to me because it posed a question i've never thought of before, regarding a topic that was so familiar. The Happy Birthday song is so common in our lives that is has become a part of the bigger culture. I liked this video because it was informative and engaging as it showed references to common pop culture images throughout. This was also a great video because it is something that a wide audience can relate to as variations of the song is sung all over the world. When the narrator was talking about the Red Lobster example (and how restaurants have to pay money to Warner to use "their" song legally) it truly made me realize that "wow, a lot of restaurants don't actually sing the Happy Birthday song traditionally, they usually have their own version of it". I had never known why that was until now and it was eye opening. It almost seems wrong that a song so rooted in many traditions/cultures, is owned by a large company who can profit from it.
After watching the video, I clicked on a few of the links provided and noticed that many of them did not work. I ended up really liking the last link that I clicked, which was the Teaching Copyright website (https://www.teachingcopyright.org/). This website, unlike many of the others, was appealing to the eye and organized in a way that you knew what the purpose of this website was and how to go about navigating it. I really like how this resource provided a curriculum for teachers to use in order to teach their students about copyright and fair use. This opens up the discussion for students and teachers so they can both maintain their involvement in creation while understanding the boundaries. Since many educators might not know very much about fair use themselves, this resource allows teachers to learn and teach their students accurately with the lessons provided. I love how this website is well rounded and has resources, handouts, and lesson plans for teachers to follow. These are extremely important for educators to teach and students to learn about as society continues to move toward a multimedia/technology ruled lifestyle.
Elaina,
ReplyDeleteI also did not put much into consideration about copyright and fair use. I never realized how much information we take from other people's original works. As future educators, we're constantly trying to promote our students to be great citizens and members in the society. That should include using original or copyright material in our classrooms. I actually have heard about the use of Happy Birthday before from those random trivia videos. However, it still surprises me how something that was copyrighted many years ago cannot be used freely to this day.