Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Perhaps your son should explain copyright to you.
You started too late. You should have taught him what you wanted him to know before his teachers taught him what the RIAA and MPAA wanted him to know.
Also, you didn't format shift it, you downloaded it, and that download was not fair use.
The good news is that I don't think you did anything illegal. Copyright infringement involves making a copy without a license to make copies, which you did not do, and could not do, since you didn't have a copy in the first place.
Now, if you made a copy of the copy you downloaded, that might be something you could be sued for. But it isn't illegal unless you are making unlicensed copies commercially.
See that "Preview" button?
It's actually pretty brief and clear:
Article I Section 8. Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”
I'm still trying to figure out why your kid's school doesn't allow them to bring an iPad to school but will let them bring a Kindle...
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
First, count your blessings that you have a son who respects rules, even perhaps in this case when he really doesn't have to.
Second, call the school and complain that it's mega-stupid that they disallow iPads when their own online library app allows you to check out books in the iPad-supported format.
Third, although you may be able to make your own legal copy, can you get someone else's bootleg copy and call it legal? Seems to me that that was Napster's business model. Where are they now?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.
If you are worried about the education get a tutor and do some homework with the kid, but 8 hours a day learning reading, writing, social studies, math, and science from Mom & Dad doesn't prepare them for any sort of real world.
And don't forget that you brainwash your kids too, just with the ideas and beleifs you hold. Public school for all its flaws, exposes them to other ideas, some good, some bad... and frankly the fact that he is intelligently debating with his kid about the ethics of copyright is probably the best possible outcome.
This Oatmeal Comic might be a good place to start.
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.
I have music I bought on 8 track (Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep, Led Zep, UFO), then bought the album (my music buying exploded about this time, an album a week), then in some cases bought the CD. I have some 3500 CDs. It's easier to download the MP3 of a CD I own than it is to dig through boxes in a closet, find the CD, and rip it myself. Have I broken copyright law? I'm sure the MAFIAA will say HELL YES!, but I'm not so sure. Where is the line? Own the CD, download the MP3? Own the LP, download the MP3? Own the 8-track, download the MP3?
:"A better sounding format".
IMHO, I bought the IP already. To me I'm not breaking any laws. Those who get money from the buying of 8-tracks->LPs->cassettes->CDs think otherwise. I think they're thinking is greedy and they need to cut back on the coke and hookers they consume.
Copyright law is about sucking as much $$$ out of people as it can, not what is right.
We won't even get into the CDs that sounded worse than the LPs. *cough* Nektar - Remember the future, *cough* Black Sabbath - Paranoid, *cough* I can come up with dozens of other examples where they rushed out a CD that sounded like crap cuz, well, people wanted their LPs on
Copyright's are easy to explain and understand. You don't copy stuff that you didn't produce yourself, without permission.
Fair use laws... That's the problem here. They don't make sense to the average person.
So... I can buy an MP3 of a song and play it in my house, in my car, privately all day long, but I cannot play it in public or use it in my business... Except if my business use is considered "fair Use". So I can play this song as a background for my Christmas light display, for the public, as long as I'm not charging admission or being paid for it. I can play the song in a church service, but I may not broadcast that song or distribute recordings of the song being played in the service without a license. I can write a review of the song, even including a small portion of the song in my review, but I may not play the entire song...
Then there is the whole Internet bastion of sites like U-Tube where you seemingly can do anything you want with the song, including splicing in other copyrighted material (video, pictures and the like) without any permission, but only because U-Tube is paying the license fees for you, unless they don't, or you distribute your material some other way... Unless it is considered public domain in the first place because the artist has been dead long enough.
I can understand how kids would be confused by all this...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
There are a lot nuances to this.
You could explain that illegal is not necessarily immoral, especially in a case where you've paid for the content.
You could encourage him to choose books from authors who don't publish with DRM, which is probably the best way for any individual to influence the market. But won't get him this book and is probably over his head.
Or you could just put the book on his Kindle and not tell him how you did it, since it sounds like he's going to drop a dime on you if you tell him you downloaded it. Maybe download 1984 for him while you're at it.
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).
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The first step is to demonstrate that what is legal and what is moral are not coextensive. Once one understands that the law is at best a compromise, and its formation subject to the whims of the powerful, typically preserving, if not aggravating, the divisions in our societies, then copyright makes perfect sense.
The most important skill and experience you take away from public school is the ability to deal with the public.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time
Can you cite any evidence that this is true? With five minutes of googling I located research that found homeschoolers equally or slightly better socialized, according to several different metrics, and none that found they were worse.
Homeschooled kids lose out on that big time, and no, your church, sports, and social field trips you organize with other homeschooled kids is not a substitute.
So let me get this straight. Starting in public Middle/Jr High school preteens begin to be stratified into caste systems and are socialized by peers that they âoecannotâ accept those one year or two years under them. Middle and high school students spend the majority of their time in a fixed location away from the âoepublic.â Meanwhile kids being homeschooled and participating in coops are socializing with a wide variety of pre teens and teens regardless of their year in school. The homeschoolers are also out and about in the âoepublicâ and can actually have a conversation with a adults.
Paper books aren't definitively better, not by a long shot.
When I want to read paper books on my 1 month vacation to a remote island in the south pacific I have to lug them around with me. They take up space and add weight even when I'm done with them.
With digital books I can bring my entire library with me on my iPad and read whatever and whenever I want. And if I manage to find good Wifi somewhere I can even buy more books.
I've done trips both ways (lugging paper books around and downloading a ton of reading material to my iPad) and the latter is infinitely more preferable.
Aside from some special books I like to keep in my collection, I've transferred my entire library to digital and I couldn't be happier. I think the big "a ha" moment came for me shortly after I bought a kindle a decade ago. I ended up getting stuck in an airport overnight after a missed connection. Everything was closed. I was able to buy a book right on the spot to read while I waited for the first flight of the morning.
With rare exceptions I haven't bought a paper book since.
I was raised in a (professionally) political family. That meant that as a kid, I understood that it was my parents' job to write or change laws. Laws can change. Some laws are bad. Some laws used to be good, and now aren't. Most of the rules and laws we actually interact with are local. Many more people work on local laws than state or national laws. That's a good place to start.
Next, morality. Your son has good moral instincts. Don't discourage that! Generally, you shouldn't do anything you don't want other people knowing about. If you have to keep it secret to keep being who you want to be, don't do it.
Finally, breaking the rules. Sometimes you find you need to break a rule. You know that something is right, and you don't care what society or the law says about it. In that case, you need to be ready to accept the consequences.
In this case, what are the consequences of violating copyright laws? What are the consequences of violating the school rules? Why are you more willing to violate a federal law than a school rule? (As a parent, I know that my child will be punished for me breaking a school rule. In that situation, I'm also happy to try to take any consequences myself.) These are good lessons on how society actually works.
My best advice to you is that you have your strongest voice as a citizen in local government, which includes your school. Teach your child to engage in a productive way with government by example. Don't simply accept what the government is telling you to do. That's not how our system is supposed to work. The solution here is to get your school to change their rules. Start with a teacher, then the principle, then up from there.