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iPods Valuable in the College Classroom?
Infonaut writes "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article called When iPod goes collegiate, examining the iPods for students program at Duke University. It seems that while many students and professors find them valuable for classwork, this is America, so questions about intellectual property rear their ugly head: "Do they have permission from the person who wrote the lectures to share it?" asks one IP attorney, referring to lectures recorded on iPods."
How about the Neuros Audio Computer? Now that's one slick piece of tech... and it records audio, unlike the iPod which needs third-party hardware.
Copyright applies to works "fixed in a tangible medium."
Lectures, by and large, are NOT fixed in a tangible medium... unless the professor is literally reading word-for-word from his notes, the lecture has not been fixed into a tangible medium and is therefore not subject to copyright.
In fact, it only becomes subject to copyright when it is recorded on the iPod (and is fixed in a tangible medium).
Depending on whether a classroom is considered a "public area" this could mean that the student, not the professor, holds the copyright to the recording so produced. If it is not a "public area" I'm not sure what the statute is, though, and whether or not you would need permission of the professor to do so.
Which brings up the issue of permission; most professors I knew were more than happy to let you record their lectures in college for a classmate provided you asked first. If the professor's lecture is his own work (and one presumes it is), he has the right to allow you to make copies (he holds the copyright) and the problem is solved.
Simply put, lawyer is being an asshat and looking to stir up more controversy. Oh, and our IP laws are f*cking broken.
IANAL, TINLA.
Here at Middlebury College we are working on projects to use iPods as study aids in foreign-language courses:
http://segue.middlebury.edu/sites/achapin-ipod
The two uses are as follows:
1. Give students mobile access to our databases of tens of thousands of vocabulary audio files while using the rating system to sort known versus unknown vocabulary.
2. Allow students to record and hear themselves speaking vocabulary and other exercises.
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
Seeing that iPods cost so much it's a shame Apple has seen fit to limit their recording ability so they sound like scratchy tin-cans on the best of days. I've heard them and it's not pretty. I recommend a non-limited recorder with a *real* pre-amped mic.
Da Blog
It's a Nokia 6600 but the emulator should run on any Symbian 60 based phone.
There is also a Gameboy/Gameboy Color emulator and a *gasp* SNES emulator (although it's too slow on current processors).
- NES Emulator
- GB/GBC Emulator
- SNES Emulator
João Pinheiro
when i took business law back in the day, the lecturer was a former chief prosecutor and had lots of experience. but if there was one policy he enforced, it was that we were NOT allowed to record his lectures. that sucked, since most of the test material was from his lectures. his stated reason was that because he will (and did) say controversial stuff, as well as mentioning specifics of certain cases (without naming names), if there was a recording of what he said out there, it *could* be used against him. it was his way of protecting himself. so i imagine in this day and age of mp3's and decentralized distribution, i can see how a) some professors could have a problem with their lectures free floating out there or b) see devices such as an iPod as the greatest invention since the typewriter in helping them teach...
There are no copyright issues whatsoever in recording someone speaking. The spoken word does not qualify for copyright protection. Period.
Title 17, 102(1):
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression
The spoken word is not a tangible medium of expression.
When it is recorded, the recording can qualify for copyright protection (if it's original enough, and meets all the other requirements), but that copyright belongs to the person making the recording, not the person being recorded.
There can be other issues regarding the use of someone's voice, but those are not copyright issues.
The professors quoted in this article desperately need a remedial course in copyright law.
Did you read the article? Because it's not about "iPod against the machine" and it's not written controversially at all. In fact, the Christian Science Monitor - despite the name - is a very reputable, non-biased news source. The article is also fairly thorough - especially for a non-tech news source.
The actual FA discusses why Duke thought it was a good idea to give iPods to students at all. The first question - why choose the iPod instead of a player with more function? The iPod requires additional accessories and hackery to do all the things that students want to use them for. Casual iPod users would find it difficult to share downloaded lectures, for example, because Apple makes sure that it's difficult to transfer files off of your iPod - protected or not.
And secondly, is it really a good idea to give them away without really coming up with good uses for them? "Let's give everyone an iPod first, and figure out how to integrate it into our curricula later!" That's certainly what seems to have happened - and that's how students feel as well.
If anyone's generating stupid publicity, it's Duke University. The article just tries to figure out what effect (if any) it has had on students and their learning and interaction methods.
That's great, but in true Slashdot fashion, you've neglected the fact that the Monitor isn't a religious paper. It's a reputable, independent publication similar to PBS in its own right, and while it isn't worth much for science journalism it's a great source for all things political.
yeah we did get one with the iPod...so it wasn't like we as students had to pay extra...i'm not saying that the iPod is the best product out there, just that we had the recording issue taken care of for us.
Couldn't everyone just save a lot of time and just email everyone the stupid lecture? Or for that matter, why bother leaving home at all? Just take it online.
While maybe this might appeal to some
Frankly I think that the new "notebook" document type in MS Office, which combines an audio recording with typed notes and knows where in the recording the notes were taken, is potentially more useful for students than an iPod recorder, because it combines regular notetaking skills with the ability to hear what triggered those notes. And I say this as someone who's not normally a fan of MS products -- it's fairly slick. If you're in an environment where lots of people have laptops and bring them to class, this might have a greater impact in the long run than a bunch of iPods. The impact where I am has been limited, because people don't bring laptops to class very often.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
FYI: Duke students got Belkin microphone attachment with the iPod, so you could record lectures from the get go with the attachment. I know because I was one of the 1600 students that got one.
iPod Experiment
Duke iPod program to continue next year
Also, you can go to The Chronicle and search the archives for "iPod" and get any number of negative student editorials on the topic. Basically, all of us at Duke agreed that the project was a marketing campaign, plain and simple; on the other hand, you won't see us complaining. We got free (as in, paid for by a fund accumulated from previous years) iPods, and next year's freshmen will get them if they take the appropriate classes.
In addition, Carolina can go to hell. Go Devils :-P
Apple never intended for them to be used as audio recorders, and they have no control over the quality of third party dongles.
Your analogy is flawed or, rather, you are too passive. These are not "third party dongles", these are licensed and manufactured in partnership with Apple (that provides the firmware support and allows access to the iPod's innards). You don't get Apple's blessing, you don't get very far. Look at the incredibly slow progress the iPod Linux has made relative to, say, RockBox. This is because Apple actively works to lock out unauthorised development.
The iPod's hardware seems well capable of supporting high-fidelity recording, both analog and digital. The PortalPlayer PP5002B chipset (and derivatives on current models) used in all the big iPods since the early days is capable, according to PortalPlayer itself, of encoding MP3, WAV, AIFF, WMA, and ATRAC3 at up to 320Kbit/s.
A little over a year ago iPods switched to the Wolfson WM8731L ADC/DAC ($5 each in small lots!), which can sample at 44.1kHz, 48kHz or 96kHz. I haven't kept up with current iPod offerings because they are of little interest to me but I would assume Apple has not regressed on the ADC capabilities. It's hard these days to spend more than $3 on a signal chip and *not* get high-quality ADC. I note that most of the other players based on a similar PortalPlayer/Wolfson platform (eg Samsung, Philips, iRiver) offer high-fidelity recording.
So you see you are wrong. The iPod's lack of high-fidelity sound recording is not the fault of "third party dongles", it is not a limitation of iPod hardware, it is simply that Apple has chosen to intentionally limit the available quality of the recording function. As to why Apple would choose to cripple the iPod this way, many people probably have different opinions on that. personally, I feel that it's Apple's way of making nice with the RIAA.
Da Blog
I remember reading that the audio out jack will also serve as an input. Something about speaking into the left earbud...
And there's this: http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000147025394/
I assume he was making a reference to the fact that Fark.com headlines often contain "Duke sucks" when in reference to college sports. Hence the "//I'm in the wrong place, aren't I?" part.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
At my university, for several years now students have had to sign a disclaimer form before being allowed to record lectures. This is precisely for IP reasons. And, mind you, this is not in the USA.
As for notes taken by students, they are clearly the IP of the student writing them. Lecture notes written by the lecturer, however, are the IP of either the lecturer or the university, depending on university regulations. At one university I was at previously, my department had a strict policy of lecturers not posting their notes on open-access websites, for that very reason.