July 9, 2017
Making Sense of Copyright
For this assignment, I decided to use a web video tool called My Simple Show to create my own representation of the history of copyright. The intended audience for this video is my middle school video students. I would like to use this video as an introduction to the Copyright Act of 1976.
The video is hardly a representation of the entire history of copyright laws. What I did was take a snapshot of one copyright case — the 1991 copyright case of Basic Books, Inc. vs. Kinko’s — and use that case to give a brief history of copyright and its importance.
4 Comments
I loved the use of the “my simple show,” I think that I would consider showing it to my students. I would like to respectfully disagree with the comment on the authors being the real winner. Their royalty fees are pennies, compared to the amount of money the publishers get from this law.
Thi is an interesting point and ties into another dynamic that might be nearer to many K-12 students’ hearts: music. The argument for copyright and royalties as support for the artist is compromised and challenged by how little money typically goes to artists when such money is collected. It’s the labels making the money…and that’s a lose-lose. The question is: what is to be done? And in this context, even more importantly, what does a responsible, productive digital citizen do to support artists making their art while recognizing that much of the existing system profits primarily (but not only) predatory labels and publishers?
Good point, but the way I see it is that it’s better to get money from the publisher than to have Kinko’s completely steal the content. I would love to know how much authors and artists get in royalty fees compared to publishers. My dad has written a few books for college students. I’ll ask him.
Well done. I like the “My Simple Show” tool for topics like this. I’m assuming some context that would surround this video before and after students watch it, but it’s solid!
The concluding paragraph opens the door to potential controversy, both in the sense that Chris notes above but also in the idea that the students are the “losers” because they are paying higher fees. Arguably, they are only losers if they are paying *exorbitant* fees…or at least it’s worth considering that if the expectation today by youth is more often that digital things should be free, saying they are the “losers” of the Kinko’s decision might fan the flames of that not-necessarily-correct view.