Thank goodness for Ted talks. Watching these hours worth of copyright issue videos was enough to make a teacher quit her job. So, rather than dwell on the extremes that many of these videos did, I want to focus on the little bit of hope I found within the creative commons information and within Larry Lessig’s TED talk.
Lessig quoted John Phillips Souza in 1906 who said that these “talking machines” referring to radios will ruin the artistic development in this country. And, in fact, the 20th century became a culture of “read only” people. However the 21st century seems to be assuming artistic development again. Thanks to the $1500 computer, the tools of creativity have become tools of speech. It is what the next generation bases its life upon. Yet, Lessig insists, the law has not greeted this revival with very much common sense. It prohibits to such an extreme degree that legal creativity becomes stifled, at best.
Creative Commons offers possibilities and hope and does in fact seem to be a “bridge to the future”. This will begin our journey to thinking more about communities and less about content. However, in the meantime, educators have to find a way to give our students the tools and information they need to legally create, express, and use the digital technologies that are available to them.
Posted by Jennifer Williams at 6:45 PM
Jennifer, I too find that Lessig and Creative Commons have come up with a viable solution for artists to use for their copyrighted materials. I agree that they are attempting to build that “bridge to the future.” My hope is that the direction that they have taken is the beginning of the dialogue and opens more avenues to protect and promote artistic creativity in its many forms. And yes, we must make our students aware of the legalities when it comes to the productions and use of created works including their own.
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