Ask Slashdot: How Do I Explain Copyright To My Kids?

orgelspieler writes: My son paid for a copy of a novel on his iPad. When his school made it against the rules to bring iPads, he wanted to get the same book on his Kindle. I tried to explain that the format of his eBook was not readily convertible to the Kindle. So he tried to go on his schools online library app. He checked it out just fine, but ironically, the offline reading function only works on the now-disallowed iPads. Rather than paying Amazon $7 for a book I already own, and he has already checked out from the library, I found a bootleg PDF online. I tried to explain that he could just read that, but he freaked out. "That's illegal, Dad!" I tried to explain format shifting, and the injustice of the current copyright framework in America. Even when he did his own research, stumbling across EFF's website on fair use, he still would not believe me.

Have any of you fellow Slashdotters figured out a good way to navigate the moral, legal, and technological issues of copyright law, as it relates to the next generation of nerds? Interestingly, my boy seems OK with playing old video games on the Wayback Machine, so I don't think it's a lost cause.

Comments

Re:Tell him it's bunk believed by people with powe

[Doub]

Copyright is a pure (artificial and arbitrary) product of capitalism. Socialism is the library. You're just brainwashed by the western propaganda as his kid is.

Re:Simple

[penix1]

1. Explain that people need homes, because it's very cold in the winter.

2. Explain that you need money to have homes.

3. Explain that there are lots of creative people who create content in order to make money. ("Artists")

4. Explain that they only make money if people pay them to create the content.

5. Explain that the people who pay them to create the content ("Producers") also need money to have homes.

6. Explain that the Producers will only have money to have homes if they can get paid for selling the content to people.

7. Explain that the only reason Producers can get paid for selling the content to people is because of copyright, since stuff is cheap to copy.

8. Turn this into a lesson about the evolution of text and music and art in history, the printing press and the phonograph and the camera, and how over time it became more and more accessible and cheaper to copy content.

9. Explain the Sony Betamax suit that those producers lost allowing people to "time shift" and how this is an extension of that same decision.

10. Explain the concepts of the public domain and why that is the sole reason for the existence of copyright.

11. Explain how those producers lobbied (read bribed) legislators to extend copyright to the point that nothing will be released to the public domain in his lifetime.

12. Explain that the DMCA was created by those same politicians in the same manor as the extensions to try and prevent format shifting.

13. Explain what the definition of greed is (on both sides of this issue).

Re:Start with the US Constitution

[Subm]

Then follow up with The Right to Read by Richard Stallman for how it's evolving.