An interesting post at Balkinization poses some questions I’ve been wondering myself:
So what should you do in real life if you and your friends, inspired by Glee, want to make a mash-up, or a new music video for a popular song? Should you just leave this creativity to the professionals, or should you become dirty, rotten copyright violators?
Glee is a fun show that is doing a great job of encouraging kids to be creative and be themselves. Unfortunately, this poster is right in questioning what kind of message the show sends about acceptable boundaries of copyright. While the show is (I would assume) getting permission or paying royalties to mash songs up, this fact is invisible to the uninitiated viewer. I would not call it a bad thing — perhaps these are the types of creative copyright norms we want to create in our culture. It’s OK to quote (even extensively)!
After having a chance to give the iPad the “reading in bed” and (my daily) “reading the newspaper on the bus” tests, I think I have a better feeling for how this thing works as a reading device.
First and foremost, everyone else is right about the weight–it’s heeeeeavy! It’s possible to hold it up for an extended time, but not comfortable. Best to find something to lean it on (your chest, a bag, etc).
Second, the glossy screen is truly a problem for reading anywhere out in the open. The reflection from overhead lights and the mirror effect were very distracting to me.
Again, the programming was the part I found most interesting. Books are made to look like books. When you consider that the form of a book (pulp pages between a cover, with margins on the side and spaces between words) evolved over a long period, it seems a bit unnatural to attempt to impose this form on a new device. I’m sure some will want it to work like a book, but this might not be the best fit for the medium.
Perhaps a bit closer to home are news apps like the NY Times Editor’s choice. This app acts as a sort of a hybrid between their iPhone app and the desktop reader. It uses the space to display a variety of articles in an a manner that isn’t too far off from a traditional newspaper, integrates ads in a tasteful way, and yet is different enough from the print version to seem at home on this screen. The editors also take advantage of the larger screen to include the graphics that were in the print edition.
This app causes me to think further about how well this thing might work as a learning device–be it as a textbook replacement or a more interactive learning tool. While heavy, it’s lighter than a stack of textbooks, and does a good job of integrating graphics and multimedia on the page. I see digital textbooks as having the potential to keep a book’s linearity while still allowing for more interaction and following links for more information when something doesn’t make sense. I think a text on the iPad could allow a good “textbook author” to do just that.
My ultimate conclusion is that I’m not dropping my netbook for an iPad anytime in the near future, but I’m starting to see how it really might be something new and different for digital publishing. I’ll never admit Steve is right about it, though.
Op-Ed Columnist – A Word From the Wise – NYTimes.com
This opinion piece by Thomas Friedman is a few days old, but it hits right on a topic that I’ve thought about quite a bit lately. He quotes the Chief Executive of Intel.
Otellini noted that a 2009 study done by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and cited recently in Democracy Journal “ranked the U.S. sixth among the top 40 industrialized nations in innovative competitiveness — not great, but not bad. Yet that same study also measured what they call ‘the rate of change in innovation capacity’ over the last decade — in effect, how much countries were doing to make themselves more innovative for the future. The study relied on 16 different metrics of human capital — I.T. infrastructure, economic performance and so on. On this scale, the U.S. ranked dead last out of the same 40 nations. … When you take a hard look at the things that make any country competitive. … we are slipping.â€
We live pretty comfortably here in the States. I would argue that much of that comfort is built on an investment in a number of commons networks like the interstate, postal service. Other social policies like education (which Friedman focuses on) and intellectual property also have played a part in our ability to innovate, which ultimately helps business and our standard of living.
While he doesn’t come right out and say it, I think Friedman’s argument could be extended to say that the relentless focus on short term profit (immediate gratification) is harming our long term ability to compete globally. This unfortunately is no easy mindset to change, as it appears to pervade politics and business.
I can’t think of any reasonable way to respond, but it’s good to know that I’m not the only one feeling this way.
Educause, the nationwide organization of educational technologists, has penned a response regarding the Association for Information and Media Equipment complaint to UCLA regarding streaming course videos. I’m glad to see that they are not recommending any change in course because of this. In fact, they are taking a bit of a defensive tone by quoting blogs/comments that are quite critical of this action. Seems they are not going to take this lying down.
A recent dispute between the Association for Information and Media Equipment and UCLA highlights the tenuous nature of online copyright in education. The article linked below summarizes:
Copyright law does include exemptions for professors who wish to use audiovisual media “in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction†— so long as the professor is not showing media that he or she knows has been made illegally. The university said streaming the video on a password-protected Web site, where only students who are registered members of the class can access it, satisfies these criteria.
But the trade group is arguing that a password-protected space on the Web is not a classroom. “The face-to-face teaching exemption allows a video to be played in class, not streamed to the classroom from a remote location,†Dohra said in an e-mail. “As to the fair use claim, when videos are streamed to students outside the classroom, password protection may limit access to some degree. However, requiring a password doesn’t make an infringement fair use.â€
It’s my understanding that most of us who work in higher-ed technology support believe password protecting copyrighted materials to ensure that only students enrolled in a course brings them into compliance with the TEACH Act. This could be a signal of a big departure from that understanding.
via News: Hitting Pause on Class Videos – Inside Higher Ed.
