• Please consider this Creative Commons licensed with open use!

• No attribution needed.

• Take it, mash it, mix it, remix it, etc.

THE CHALLENGE!•#NCTE15 #REMIX

• Create some fair use remixes and content based on NCTE sessions, materials, ideas, etc.!

Tim Amidon

Assistant Professor

Colorado State University

Kyle Stedman

Assistant Professor of English

Rockford University

Dànielle Nicole DeVoss

Professor of Professional Writing

Michigan State University / University of Louisville

OVERVIEW1. discussing a few contextual examples

2. exploring some classroom copyright scenarios

3. putting fair use to work

4. sharing copyright resources

5. situating some copyright activities

CONTEXTUALIZING USE

• writing today often requires composers to draw upon multiple modes of representation and meaning-making

• today’s computers and robust networks allow composers to choreograph audio, video, still images, text, and more

• writers may not have the rhetorical or technical tools to create audio, video, and other visual elements for their multimedia compositions

• writers may want to draw, for rhetorical effect, on circulating cultural bits and bytes—songs, images, video clips, and more

…and we thus may need to borrow the work of others

OUR RIGHTS

• We have the right to copy, distribute, share, etc., and fairly use work.

• We have the right to encourage students to make creative fair uses of copyright-protected materials.

• We have the right to put fair use to work in our classrooms and our schools.

OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

• We must stay as up-to-date as we can on copyright changes that impact our classrooms and our students.

• We should be fair use advocates in our schools.

• We must emphasize ethical source use (especially in the context of fair uses).

RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES

In academic contexts, if you copy and paste passages from Pride and Prejudice without appropriately attributing that material to Jane Austen, you are guilty of plagiarism.

Elsewhere, if you copy and paste passages from Pride and Prejudice without appropriately attributing that material to Jane Austen, you are guilty of… nothing.

Pride and Prejudice is in the public domain, meaning that its copyright has expired and it is owned by all.

In academic contexts, if you copy and paste passages from Gone with the Wind, include those passages in quotation marks or block quotes, and appropriately cite Margaret Mitchell, you are a good, ethical scholar and user of source material.

Elsewhere, however, if you adapt characters from Gone with the Wind and rewrite the novel from a plantation slave’s perspective, you will get sued by the estate of the original author and publishing company.

If you win the lawsuit, arguing that your novel is parody, you will be allowed to continue to distribute your work, but only with a big PARODY label on your cover.

In professional contexts, if you create a “lexicon” based on the characters, settings, scenes, plots, etc., of the Harry Potter novels and attempt to publish that reference book, you may be guilty of copyright infringement.

In any context, if you create a parody piece based on the characters, settings, scenes, plots, etc., of the Harry Potter novels, typically that piece will fall under “fair use” because parody is one of the acts protected under the fair use clause.

Vanderhye v. iParadigms

• Students at McLean High required to submit papers to Turnitin.

• “The court concluded that ‘iPardigms through Turnitin, uses the papers for an entirely different purpose, namely, to prevent plagiarism and protect the students’ written works from plagiarism by archiving the students’ works as digital code. “

• February 2007: Lenz uploads 29-second recording of her son bouncing along to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” to YouTube

• June 2007: YouTube informs Lenz that it removed the video from its website after Universal claimed that the recording infringed a copyright controlled by the music company

• under federal copyright law, a mere allegation of copyright infringement can result in the removal of content from the Internet

• Later 2007: Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. (2007): U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use before issuing takedown notices for content posted on the internet

• February 2010: Judge issued a ruling rejecting several of Universal’s affirmative defenses, including the defense that Lenz suffered no damages, though the court did suggest that at that stage in the proceedings, Lenz's damages seemed nominal.

• January 2013: Judge denied both parties’ motions for summary judgment; both parties have cross-appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

• September 14, 2015: the 9th Circuit affirmed the District Court. (That is, dancing baby wins.)

“ Today’s ruling sends a strong message that copyright law does not authorize thoughtless censorship of lawful speech. ”

(EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry, 2015)(EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann, 2007)

“ Copyright abuse can shut down online artists, political analysts, or—as in this case—ordinary fami-lies who simply want to share snippets of their day-to-day lives. ”

SCENARIO #1

• What if we’re asking students to use media sources to respond to a text?

• How do we respond if they ask “how much can I use?”

Ask: How much do you need? Focus on rhetorical purpose.

Imagine yourself in the perspective of a copyright holder; ask: “If this was your original work and someone used it in this way, how would you feel about that?”

Work through the Fair Use use checklist with your students. Talk about different places where their actions happen (e.g., in the classroom, at their jobs).

What about attribution? Citing sources? Suggest that students follow the conventions of the genre (e.g., end credits in movies).

• What does it take to create a copyright?

• Copyright is automatically created and fixed to a piece upon its creation and storage (storage being a drawing, recording, etc.)

• Ambient music NO; news clips YES

• “I am not claiming copyright.” “I don’t own this!”

• When does public domain happen?

• On Writing; entire PDF online… If we use it, are we in trouble?

• TEACH Act—online and face-to-face learning

• Georgia State coursepack lawsuit (initially in favor of educators, but still under appeal)

• And what about open source educational resources? Will there be a big ripple effect?

• Creative Commons licensing is one option—where we can decide how our work can be used (protects our original work)

GREAT SESSION QUOTES

• “That’s not cool.”

• “Chill out.”

• “We don’t cite sources in MLA in rap.”

SCENARIOS FROM EARLIER

• When I make copies for my classes, am I breaking the law?

• What is fair use in digital spaces and across servers?

• What about student projects with audio, video, etc.?

• If creating assessment approaches, can we include/use/share different resources from online?

• What is the relationship between citing and theft?

• Do we always have to practice what we preach? Can/should we be modeling everything we try to encourage students to do?

• How can we best teach teachers to follow copyright law (in a library/media center context)?

• What about language teaching and resources that come from international sources/spaces?

• What can we use in our digital creations? What happens with our work—is there a chance it might be pulled from YouTube or other digital spaces?

• Can we use personal Netflix or amazon prime accounts to show video in class?

• What about journalistic contexts across print and digital spaces?

Scenario #1

• You are working on a slideshow presentation for your class.

• You want photographs related to your presentation topic to illustrate your points and engage your audience.

• You do a Google image search, find some appropriate photos, and embed them in your slideshow.

Can you? What are some possible implications? What if the context isn’t your classroom—say, for instance, the context is a professional development day workshop or a presentation for a national conference?

• You are particularly proud of the slideshow presentation with embedded photographs found through a Google search—the one you created for class, and added notes and explanation into.

• You post the presentation to your web site, as part of your professional portfolio, to show your design and presentation skills.

Can you? What are the potential implications of doing so? How might your presentation be received by others?

Scenario #2

• Your students work on a civic engagement project as part of your class.

• One of the products they create is a brochure for a local nonprofit.

Who owns the brochure? Can an individual student include the brochure in her professional portfolio?

Scenario #3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJK7n_wcSsM

• criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research

• four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes

2. the nature of the copyrighted work

3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

FAIR USE

Although fair use can be evaluated in a range of contexts, the only context where a Fair Use can be officially, legally determined is in court.

Mattel vs. Walking Mountain• 1st factor: parody (more fair)

• 2nd factor: creative work (less fair)

• 3rd factor: radical change to content (more fair)

• 4th factor: not hurting the market (more fair)

Court: “It is not in the public’s interest to allow Mattel complete control over the kind of artistic works that use Barbie as a reference for criticism and comment.”

“ That’s how creativity happens. Artists collaborate over space and time, even if they lived centuries and continents apart. Profound creativity requires maximum exposure to others’ works and liberal freedoms to reuse and reshape others’ material. ”

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN

“ Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive? ”

LARRY LESSIG

inventio (the selection of tunes to be played)

dispositio (the ordering or sequencing of them)

elocutio (the cuts and edits made; the loving care put into the cover and decoration)

BOONMARCUS

VALUE

ENCOUNTEREXCHANGEPERFORMANCERECEPTIONINTERACTION

PRESENTATIONPERCEPTIONDISSASSEMBLAGERECREATIONCOLLECTIONDISTRIBUTIONEXPLORATION

COPYRIGHT IN CLASSROOMS

• What does this really mean for us as educators and in our classrooms?

• What responsibilities and rights, as educators, should we most emphasize with respect to student composing? (e.g., plagiarism vs. fair-use vs. remix vs. appropriation)?

• How aware are we/our colleagues of how fair use and DMCA exemptions function to empower the composing our students do?

COPYRIGHT IN CLASSROOMS

• How do we handle the disparity between experience? What do we say when kids want to hear “rules” and aren’t yet ready for these types of conversations? We need to support them in the process of developing judgement, thinking ethically of other people’s materials, etc.

• Ethical practices have to stay at the core of what we do; ask permission, say thank you, give attribution, etc. (when appropriate). Be good consumers and producers of media.

• Be attentive to critique, transformation, derivation, etc. (but this doesn’t inherently provide a fair use defense).

• Use public domain materials, government-produced materials, Creative Commons materials, etc.

COPYRIGHT IN CLASSROOMS

• Teach “rules” in context (cultural, technological, historical, etc.).

• Teach in socially and culturally responsible ways: time, place, matter, manner, purpose, intent.

• Students make content; students compare, create, write, etc.

• Take copyright as a creativity-with-constraints context (it is sometimes purposeful to limit students’ access to content—they have to make it themselves!)

(SOME) RESOURCES

www.digitalwriting.org/ncte

ASSIGNMENTS AND IDEAS

• Suzanne Scott | Video Essay

• Bill Wolff | Mashing an Argument

• Leigh Graves Wolf | Remix, Reuse, Recycle

• DS106 | Assignment Bank

TAKE-AWAYS?

1. Chill out.

2. It depends.

3. Pay attention.

OUR RIGHTS

• We have the right to copy, distribute, share, etc., and fairly use work.

• We have the right to encourage students to make creative fair uses of copyright-protected materials.

• We have the right to put fair use to work in our classrooms and our schools.

OUR RESPONSIBILITIES

• We must stay as up-to-date as we can on copyright changes that impact our classrooms and our students.

• We should be fair use advocates in our schools.

• We must emphasize ethical source use (especially in the context of fair uses).

RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES

• You decide to pursue a digital humanities project with your students, which requires that you and they have full access to the full text of about 15 novels still under copyright.

How can you legally access these texts? What resources might you turn toward to make an informed decision about the legality of accessing and using these works?

Scenario #x

Scenario #xx

• You and your students work together on a project to digitize, tag, and create a rich, searchable, public database of artifacts (mainly from the late 1800s and early 1900s) at your city’s library.

Who owns the database?

Who owns the code under the database?

Who owns the contents of the database?

Scenario #x

• Your students each created a video remix that includes copyrighted images, songs, and video. They each uploaded their video to YouTube. About half of your students have received take-down notices for infringing content.

What might you do to respond to this dilemma?

What pedagogical moves might prevent such impacts in the future?

Scenario #x

• Your students want to create a video remix using copyright-protected songs and movies. Some of your students bring in content from home that they own (DVDs, CDs); others log on to streaming sites where they have subscriptions to access music or movies. Much of the content is protected by DRM, but two of your tech-savvy students say “this isn’t a problem."

If your students are, indeed, talking about circumventing the DRM-encryption, is their doing so legal?

Scenario #x

• Your students are creating digital portfolios of their work using sites like Wordpress, Weebly, or Wix. You ask them to design the site to look attractive and professional; many find images from Google Images, save them, and upload them to their home pages.

Can they legally use these images? What would make the use more or less legal?

Scenario #x

• Your students are producing 5-minute audio essays. Most students are simply recording their voices to digital files (like MP3s), one strong student mixes songs into the background underneath her voiceover, including clips from the scores of some of her favorite movies.

Is she legally allowed to use those clips? What would make her use more or less legal?