Recently, I saw Cory Doctorow speak at Elliot Bay Books in Seattle. (A similar reading was filmed at Word in Brooklyn.) He was promoting his new novel, Pirate Cinema, which starts with a boy who loses Internet access for his entire family because he is making mash-ups of copyrighted movies. If this sounds like an incredible piece of fiction, think again. Doctorow discussed the The Digital Economy Act in England and how his novel represents a scenario that could easily become reality.
But we’re fine in the USA, right? The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was defeated after all! Not so fast…Doctorow warns us not to be complacent. Firstly, SOPA was postponed not completely defeated, and there has been other legislation introduced similar to it. Secondly, Doctorow brought to my attention a new initiative from The Center for Copyright Information, “a collaborative effort between U.S. content creators in the movie and music industries and leading” Internet Service Providers. Getting surprisingly little attention given the uproar over SOPA, the Copyright Alert System (CAS) is
“part of a progressive educational system to help subscribers understand the significance of protecting copyright in the digital environment, to advise them about the importance of avoiding inadvertent or intentional online distribution of copyrighted content, and to suggest legal ways to obtain digital content.”
This is just one of many alert systems being instituted around the globe. Wikipedia provides an overview of these various “graduated response” systems. The US system “applies to peer-to-peer file sharing of digital copyrighted content. It does not address other possible forms of online copyright infringement involving the downloading or streaming of copyrighted content.”
In our the meme-saturated, mash-up world, young people need to be aware of these issues not only so they can protect themselves but also so they can protect their rights. As Cory Doctorow explains on his website while discussing why he recently altered his Creative Commons license to include “NoDerivs:”
“Copyright gives you, the public, rights. Fair use is real. Fair dealing is real. De minimum exemptions to copyright are real. You have the right to make all sorts of uses of all copyrighted works, without permission, without Creative Commons licenses.
Rights are like muscles. When you don’t exercise them, they get flabby. Stop asking for stuff you can take without permission. Please!”
Copyright is not a standard part of a school curriculum. There might be lessons about finding copyright free images and music, and I’ve had discussions with students about Creative Commons. Librarians are often charged with policing or being able to provide answers about legality rather than being asked to teach the reasoning skills that are required for a law that should not be treated as black and white. To truly grasp the concept of copyright, students need opportunities to look at case studies, discuss with others, reflect on their own uses of information, and do a lot of practice thinking through real applications of fair use. Cory Doctorow clearly believes that if we don’t use it, we’ll lose it, but we have to understand it first.