Recently in Openness Category

This video does a good job at explaining why we should share what we're doing and then explains the next step.  A Creative Commons license lets you share your work the way you want it to be shared: free for all, no remixing, non-commercial use only, requiring others to share their remixed versions of your work, etc...  Good stuff -- and the video itself is an interesting demonstration of remixed media.

At the 2008 Learning Design Summer Camp, Dr. Matt Jackson from the College of Communications talked with us about many topics related to the creation and use of digital media in higher education: Copyright, Fair Use, TEACH Act, mashups, and so forth.  The discussion is at the heart of this copyright site and I think that Matt did a very nice job of explaining the complexity of intellectual property issues.  After the bulk of his presentation, the audience had many questions about issues such as news reporting, making parodies, YouTube, citations, artwork from museums, musical performances, etc...

The Sparky Awards is a contest where students can submit a short video about the value of sharing information and win a Sparky Award plus $1000. The winner and two runner-up videos from 2007 are online. I think Penn State students are capable of winning this award, especially with access to the production facilities at the Digital Commons.

At the 2008 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, Lawrence Lessig (law professor, author, and founder of Creative Commons) came to Penn State to give his keynote presentation. He talked for about 45 minutes about current interpretation of copyright law, organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, examples of remixed media, and alternative licenses.