Copyright – Page 12 – Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze

Apple: iPhone jailbreaking violates our copyright | Apple – CNET News

CNet gives a quick overview of Apple’s argument that jailbreaking an iPhone is violates their copyright.Â The EFF rightly points out that jailbreaking is pretty consistent with “tinkering” cultures.

The EFF’s argument is that jailbreaking your iPhone is protected under fair-use doctrines, and that the Copyright Office should grant an exemption because “the culture of tinkering or hacking, if you prefer is an important part of our innovation economy.” But Apple’s response is that few users of jailbroken iPhones actually jailbroke it themselves; instead, they downloaded software created by other parties to make that happen.

The problem with Apple’s argument is that few tinkerers in other areas build their own modifications.Â Instead, many different pieces come together to make something new and personal (think about the custom car with the oversized exhaust pipe and fins). In this light, jailbreaking is opening the iPhone up to just this kind of tinkering, which is the kind of open access many expect.

Does your University own what you discover (or learn)?

I’m no patent expert, but a not so recent article in the Times (recently highlighted on Slashdot) addresses how “colleges and universities own the ideas and technologies invented by the people who work for them, including professors and graduate students who are paid to do research.”Â This is a great revenue generator for cash-strapped institutions, but things get complicated when the inventor needs to obtain a license for their own idea, as happened to the student interviewed for the article.

Schools are by definition a place of learning, which is a process of self discovery. What does it mean for a school to own something that comes out of your head while you’re working or attending there? It’s true that these discoveries happen with the aid of school resources, but others might argue that the product of all of a school’s resources is learning (or at least maybe it should be).

Educational technologists have recently worried about student’s owning the copyight to their assignments (which now often appear online)–this is an interesting twist on a similar problem.

I’ll admit that my thoughts on this feel half-baked at the moment.

A bit more on Three Strikes

Along the same lines as my last post, Ars gets into the costs of the RIAA’s proposed “3 strikes” policy. My favorite part:

Jerry Scroggin is the owner of Bayou Internet and Communications(BIC),
a small ISP based in Monroe, Louisiana with around 11,000 small
business, residential, and municipal customers. BIC already receives
notifications from the RIAA each month, and each time”I ask for their
billing address,” Scroggin told CNET. “Usually, I never hear back.”

Techdirt also mentions something that crossed my mind, but didn’t make it into the blog post–taking the fight out of the courts allows the recording industry to sidestep due process. It may make less of a “public statement,” but privately settling these disputes might ensure an outcome that’s more agreeable and perhaps (from their perspective) better than they might have won under the law.

Resources on copyright for education

The Center for Social Media has created a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. Right at the start, the video addresses a misconception I’ve heard on my campus: “you can get in trouble for using videos in the classroom.” The principles listed in the report itself clearly state guidelines for when it’s (likely) alright to use copyrighted material in (and preparing for) class. While rights holders may dispute this, I hope these clear statements are the type that any educational institution could get behind.

I recently gave a brief talk on copyright for a Digital Storytelling workshop. I promised to share the materials, the slides and a quick summary of what I said for each slide are after the break.