How do we teach copyright in countries where international copyright law is not often followed?
The issues of copyright and plagiarism have always been tricky ones in schools, particularly when discussing the rights and responsibilities of students in the creative process. We want them to emulate exemplary works, but copy them. We want them to connect to established ideas, but not represent them as their own. Finally, we want them to create, but not infringe upon somebody's else's creation.
As such, it's time we start changing the perceptions that underlie what may be our typical approach to copyright. Let's assume that we spend the majority of our time teaching our students what copyright is based on the US copyright law because we are from the US and/or our students are headed there for university. It's important that they learn the rules for citing other people's work and have a basic understanding of copyright. The resources we watched in class, Copyright, What's Copyright and A Fair(y) Use Tale do a good job of explaining it in student-friendly language. Sites like Public Domain Sherpa take the job further and add concrete examples for further understanding.
Now let's address the three points I mentioned earlier. We want student to emulate exemplary works. Even for this blog post, we were provided with an outstanding post that we are meant to use as inspiration for our writing. Emulate, but don't copy. Of the three issues, this is the easiest to address in our teaching. We have done this for years by providing exemplars, anchor papers and examples of great pieces. We can continue to do this, and to encourage students to copy style. When things get "a little too close for comfort," such as the Singapore Microphone Video and the Common Craft series, we need to engage our students in purposeful discussion about giving credit and adding words like, "inspired by" to our work.
Secondly, we would like our students to connect to established ideas, but not represent them as their own. I've talked about connections on this blog before, and I believe they are the cornerstone of any good education. The world is built on ideas and there have been a lot of good ones so far. Our students should be able to see, hear and think about them. Then it's incumbent upon us to encourage them to write about those ideas and develop their own ideas about them! We will continue to work with them on the concept of citing sources and giving credit where it's due. Personally, I'd like to see a shift in the way we do this. We tend to teach this from a culture of threat or a fear of retribution from the copyright holder. "If you don't cite your sources, you're a plagiarist." "If someone discovers that you've taken their work, they will come and get you and take you to copyright jail..." I'd like that to shift to something more simple. "Give credit to the original source because it's the right thing to do." Why not approach it from the angle that our desire is to have students exploring work that is already done, but we just want them to say how it affects them?
Finally, the last issue is going to take a bit more work as we become increasingly more digital and more connected. We want students to create, but not infringe upon somebody's else's creation. In international schools, this often moves us into the murky waters of international copyright. But like the last issue, I believe this can change with some new approaches. Certainly movements like Creative Commons are helping the issue by creating a culture of sharing, with clear explanations of how that sharing may take place. Again I believe that a simple re-assessment of what's valuable can help this situation. It's important to give credit where credit is due. If it's a stylistic similarity, a simple "inspired by" goes a long way to getting the message across to students. If it's CC citation, then that is even more precise. The key for me lies in purpose. If we begin with good purpose, work with good purpose and finish with good purpose, then it's easy to negotiate copyright.
The image I've included here is my beginning attempts to negotiate these issues in a simplistic, but symbolic way. I used wikicommons images to create a new piece that relates back to the title of this post. I tried to use all of things I talked about in the piece in the process. On an unrelated note, if you've made it this far, here is your reward.
Photo Attributions:
Dezidor [CC-BY-3.0] , 能無しさん[CC-BY-SA-3.0] and Dpbsmith [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
As such, this new image should be considered free to use and remix under the terms of [CC-BY-SA-3.0]. Enjoy!
The issues of copyright and plagiarism have always been tricky ones in schools, particularly when discussing the rights and responsibilities of students in the creative process. We want them to emulate exemplary works, but copy them. We want them to connect to established ideas, but not represent them as their own. Finally, we want them to create, but not infringe upon somebody's else's creation.
As such, it's time we start changing the perceptions that underlie what may be our typical approach to copyright. Let's assume that we spend the majority of our time teaching our students what copyright is based on the US copyright law because we are from the US and/or our students are headed there for university. It's important that they learn the rules for citing other people's work and have a basic understanding of copyright. The resources we watched in class, Copyright, What's Copyright and A Fair(y) Use Tale do a good job of explaining it in student-friendly language. Sites like Public Domain Sherpa take the job further and add concrete examples for further understanding.
Now let's address the three points I mentioned earlier. We want student to emulate exemplary works. Even for this blog post, we were provided with an outstanding post that we are meant to use as inspiration for our writing. Emulate, but don't copy. Of the three issues, this is the easiest to address in our teaching. We have done this for years by providing exemplars, anchor papers and examples of great pieces. We can continue to do this, and to encourage students to copy style. When things get "a little too close for comfort," such as the Singapore Microphone Video and the Common Craft series, we need to engage our students in purposeful discussion about giving credit and adding words like, "inspired by" to our work.
Secondly, we would like our students to connect to established ideas, but not represent them as their own. I've talked about connections on this blog before, and I believe they are the cornerstone of any good education. The world is built on ideas and there have been a lot of good ones so far. Our students should be able to see, hear and think about them. Then it's incumbent upon us to encourage them to write about those ideas and develop their own ideas about them! We will continue to work with them on the concept of citing sources and giving credit where it's due. Personally, I'd like to see a shift in the way we do this. We tend to teach this from a culture of threat or a fear of retribution from the copyright holder. "If you don't cite your sources, you're a plagiarist." "If someone discovers that you've taken their work, they will come and get you and take you to copyright jail..." I'd like that to shift to something more simple. "Give credit to the original source because it's the right thing to do." Why not approach it from the angle that our desire is to have students exploring work that is already done, but we just want them to say how it affects them?
Finally, the last issue is going to take a bit more work as we become increasingly more digital and more connected. We want students to create, but not infringe upon somebody's else's creation. In international schools, this often moves us into the murky waters of international copyright. But like the last issue, I believe this can change with some new approaches. Certainly movements like Creative Commons are helping the issue by creating a culture of sharing, with clear explanations of how that sharing may take place. Again I believe that a simple re-assessment of what's valuable can help this situation. It's important to give credit where credit is due. If it's a stylistic similarity, a simple "inspired by" goes a long way to getting the message across to students. If it's CC citation, then that is even more precise. The key for me lies in purpose. If we begin with good purpose, work with good purpose and finish with good purpose, then it's easy to negotiate copyright.
The image I've included here is my beginning attempts to negotiate these issues in a simplistic, but symbolic way. I used wikicommons images to create a new piece that relates back to the title of this post. I tried to use all of things I talked about in the piece in the process. On an unrelated note, if you've made it this far, here is your reward.
Photo Attributions:
Dezidor [CC-BY-3.0] , 能無しさん[CC-BY-SA-3.0] and Dpbsmith [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
As such, this new image should be considered free to use and remix under the terms of [CC-BY-SA-3.0]. Enjoy!
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