Tech-Ed Funding to be Tied to Copyright-Ed?

feminazi writes "Ars Technica is reporting that California Assemblyman Ed Chavez has proposed legislation that would require recipients of an educational technology grant program to educate their students in copyright law as well. There are three areas of education that would be required: 'ethical behavior in regards to the use of information technology,' 'the concept, purpose, and significance of a copyright,' and 'the implications of illegal peer-to-peer network file sharing.'"

Comments

Opposite Effect of Intention

[kwalker]

I can easily see this having the opposite effect of its intention, namely programmers understanding the limitations and loopholes of copyright better than they do now. I mean how many projects have been shutdown by C&D letters sent under the DMCA? How many of those were bogus if you actually knew the law? If they're really going to teach copyright (Including the extensions and expansions), then maybe some programmers would better understand fair use and the "protections" provided by the DMCA.

Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking.

RIAA/MPAA's worst nightmare

[plopez]

If the students are *really* taught what copyrights are, how they were originally intended to work in the Constitution and the concepts of fair use, then the students will know when and how full of crap any 'anti-piracy' group might be. An educated group of consumers.

This may end up as a blow *against* the industry lobbyists, as it could create an educated group of consumers. Any EFF volunteers want to teach a class or two?

Better for the MPAA/RIAA to leave them ignorant and terrified so they fold when the letter arrives in the mail. :)

Re:Devil's Advocate

[the phantom]

I agree. I teach computers to elementary school children. When they use the internet for research, I tend to go over some basic points:

1) Not everything on the internet is true.
2) You cannot simply copy another person's work, and claim it as your own -- you need to rewrite things in your own words, and give credit to the original author (generally, that means you need an author and url in a bibliography, if nothing else).

We might spend 45 minutes discussing why these things are important (the difference between plagarism and research, for instance). It is important that children, who are using the internet for research, understand what research entails, and, hopefully, can apply those ethics to other domains. P2P is irrelevant, and off-topic. It needn't be mentioned in class, unless the lecture for the day is "Using P2P."

Re:The Law of Inintended Consequences

[MindStalker]

Well hopfully they money won't be tied to a specific curriculum. Most teachers of course will teach the standard, P2P is bad mkay curriculum though. Possibly some group might then sue the schools for teaching inacurate information, but one can only hope.

Re:Frankly, I'm look forward to it...

[mabhatter654]

Get RMS & Lessing to co-write a text with the help of the EFF & FSF. Be sure to include things like RMS "Future vision" article & Lessing's arguments to the supreme court. Then as a civic service release the book under a combination of Creative Commons and GPLD licences.. Be sure to assign the tradmark to the FSF. Then explain how copyright and trademark are working and why they made the license decisions they did right from the very first page!

The ultimate in subversion... after all, why should the public schools pay for books when they're willing to provide it for free!!

The benefits of education

[raddan]

There's a flipside to all of this. An educator can also talk about the downsides of intellectual property law, i.e., the social cost, as well as the affirmative rights of copright law, i.e., fair use. I suspect that having more people educated about copyright law will lead to a wider shift in perception of computer-based enforcement of copyright as being unfair. Hopefully that will bring about either a change in technology such that so-called "rights-management" technologies will be more permissive, or a change in law to strengthen the fair use component of copyright law.

The important question is, will this education be a vehicle for {RI,MP}AA propaganda, or will it actually be informative?

Re:Devil's Advocate

[cvd6262]

I'm going to agree with you on this.

I teach an ed tech class for pre-service teachers, and we base our curriculum on ISTE's NETS-T ( http://cnets.iste.org/Teachers/t_stands.html ), which are now part of NCATE. Standard VI, indicator A states that teachers should "model and teach legal and ethical practice related to technology use." I separate the "legal" and "ethical" in my lessons.

I teach them the fair use guidelines, some of the case history, and give them sample situations and have them decide which are fair use, and which are not.

Then, I present Lawrence Lessig's part of it. I talk about "common sense revolts", Dmitry Sklyarov, Dr. Ed Felton, DMCA, etc. I show them the evidence and let them decide whether copyright "law" is "ethical" or not.