Nigel Robertson :: Blog :: Copyright

Just been hanging out in the Future of Education conference organised by George Siemens.  Leigh Blackall from Otago Poly has just given a very interesting insight into copyright and some of the difficulties with various creative commons licences.  This particularly seems to be the case when they try to use material that has a non-commercial statement.  Mash-ups aren't just happening to software but also to providers so Otago may be working with some commercial companies in the vocational field to provide training and accreditation.  This restricts their ability to use such cc-nc licensed material.

Internally they have been looking at their contribution in relation to their own materials.  Leigh reported that as an institution, it looks like Otago Poly are going to make their materials available with a default CC attribution only licence.

 Out of the side discussion that was going on during Leigh's talk, someone posted a link to A Fair(y) Use Tale on YouTube.  It's a wry look at copyright law using carefully selected 'slices' of Disney cartoons and it makes its point well (although some of the sound needs tweaking slightly for my tired ears!).  I scanned down some of the comments to find a couple complaining that if someone comes up with an idea then it's theirs and no one else should be allowed to use it.  What came to my mind was "It's mine, it's mine, I thought of it first" - which I then remembered was just paraphrasing my six year old

 My other reaction probably relates to the nature of knowledge and creation and having been talking a lot recently about constructivist and socio-constructivist ideas.  What really is an original idea?  Without going into a deep thought mode (or I'll never write anything!) I don't think there is such a thing as an original thought.  All we do is based in our socio-cultural context which is predicated on everything that has gone before.  Actually maybe it's a thought without precedents rather than 'original' that I'm thinking of.  Anyway we are always using thoughts, ideas, concepts, artifacts whatever that have passed throough the minds of others in developing our own 'original' ideas.  Copyright therefore seems like the theft that it claims to protect against.  I think that the argument is more nuanced than this (I'm a pragmatist) but it's a start.