On December 9, 2008, Melanie Dulong de Rosnay gave a presentation at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society about a distance education program that is designed to help librarians navigate copyright issues.  Fortunately, the Berkman Center recorded this presentation and made it available to view online or access through a portable device (i.e. audio or video versions for iPods and other media players).  Melanie is part of the Copyright for Librarians project at Harvard.  They appear to have a blog about the course, although it doesn't seem to be updated often.  Still, it provides some background on this project and the course.

The Center for Social Media released a guide called "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education", which describes five principles that reflect consensus thinking of how fair use applies to K-12 education, higher education, and non-profit organizations that offer educational programs -- especially related to media literacy education (a very important topic!).  Each of these principles includes a description of an educational application, the principle of fair use that is being employed, and any limitations to the use of that fair use principle. Also, for some additional insight into this report, Henry Jenkins, director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, wrote an excellent endorsement of this document.

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.

A few weeks ago, I met with some students at the Schreyer Honors College who are blogging about their experiences at Penn State.  One of the students and I started talking about how nice it is to finally have some online services where we can watch TV shows and movies that we like without the copyright issues or spyware problems associated with some peer-to-peer file sharing services.  Here are some of the ones that I use, but if you know of others, please leave a comment and let me know.

Hulu - Since their launch in 2007, Hulu has become a popular site for viewing movies and TV shows from "more than 100 content providers, including FOX, NBC Universal, MGM, Sony Pictures Television, Warner Bros. and more. (from hulu.com)".  Their model is supported through the inclusion of advertisements.  The real killer application is the large number of popular shows that you can view on this site for free.  I like this model.  It's free to the consumer and on-demand.  The provider gets ad revenue.  And it's all legal.  The only major drawback that I've seen is that episodes of shows aren't on Hulu forever.  It's typically the last few shows for currently running series.  This may be done so Hulu doesn't compete with DVD sales.

iTunes - From the beginning, iTunes has been a popular application for downloading music.  With the addition of movies and television shows, plus the idea of a "season pass" for TV series, iTunes has become a great way of finding what you need.  They have a very large selection and integration with the AppleTV, so you can download and watch shows and movies on your normal television.  This model is supported by payments for individual shows or series.  They also have a rental option, which gives you access to some content for a limited time.

Joost - A nice service if you're looking for a few specific movies or TV shows.  Say you wanted to watch The Fifth Element.  Joost has it online for free (with with rather nice quality).  You have to watch one commercial every 15 minutes or so (which is the mechanism for supporting this services).  But it is a lot less of an interruption than traditional movies on television.

Netflix - I've been a Netflix member for several years.  In addition to the DVD rentals included with my membership, I can now watch over 12,000 movies instantly on my Mac or PC.  This model is financially supported through monthly membership fees.  A nice new addition to this instant watching service is that you can get a Netflix player, so you can browse and watch Netflix movies on your television.  Very recently, they added this ability through the Xbox 360 (which is $199 now).  That's almost enough to make me want to buy one. If I were going to write a script for an anti-movie-piracy video (like the other videos on this site), I would probably focus on the "why pirate when you can get this stuff for free or low cost through legitimate and safe channels" argument.  It's an argument that I practice.

In the midst of putting together some resources for an Online Issues Forum presentation, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the elements of a Creative Commons license, so people would have a better idea of what the symbols mean and what they can do with those resources.  This page on the Creative Commons site is called "Meet the Licenses" and explains each of the combination of license provisions.  For example, the little person means that you need to give credit to the person who created the orginal media.  The dollar sign crossed out means that the media can only be used for noncommercial purposes. So is an educational institution noncommercial?  I found out that the noncommercial provision is being studied now and new guidelines will be released in 2009.  The old draft guidelines say that nonprofit educational institutions fall within noncommercial use.  However, if you modify the content and keep it behind a password, you may be violating other provisions, such as the "share alike" requirement (that's the little circular arrow icon.

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...

I was reading through The Daily Collegian today and thought this story was interesting. It helps illustrate that these copyright issues and the activity of organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) are not abstract. In addition to talking about how this issue affects local students and what Information Technology Services is doing to monitor student bandwidth use, this article also mentions Dr. Matt Jackson, from the College of Communications. Dr. Jackson helped us think through this copyright site.

A friend at Penn State's University Libraries shared this resource with me. It's a page within the Pennsylvania Center for the Book site which addresses copyright basics, including a definition and some examples of cases where you can duplicate copyrighted material. There is a section of this page that describes "First Sale" - which essentially gives you the right to sell things like used books and CDs. I looked up a bit more about First Sale on Wikipedia and there is a 2008 case listed where the court ruled that selling used software was legal. Very interesting stuff.

The Penn State "Campus Downloading" site was created by the Recording Industry Association of America to explain the legal issues surrounding students downloading copyrighted music (typically through peer to peer file sharing services). It includes an FAQ that covers copyright law and legal consequences. They also have a video that explains many of these issues and a list of Web sites where you can buy songs or albums, pay a subscription for unlimited downloads, or get completely free music.

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.