I am sitting down to write this blog and trying to figure out if Dr. Sam is a Wizard. I suppose, one could look at that in one of two ways: a.) a person who practices magic or sorcery; or b.) a person of amazing skill or accomplishment. Like beauty, I guess it is all in the eye of the beholder. Whatever you might think should you know him, our lesson was a real challenge. Having spent a good deal of my time taking courses in the law department at the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I have come to hate lawyer jargon. Much of what they say can be said succinctly, in a way the common or average man could understand. If you doubt this try understanding Copyright Law, as it is written.
After reading a million or so words, it can all be boiled down to a few simple sentences. Everything you see online that someone has drawn (art work), said or done ( I think this includes humming and doodling)…except maybe drawing a breath of air, is copyrighted and falls under the protection of the law. The second lesson is very little of this material can be released, if any, unless you get permission to use it. So given this situation, a section was added into the law that was suppose to give “fair use “to scholars, teachers and professors or others who would use it to teach, or in commentary and etc. The problem with “fair use” is, if you have something you have found that you believe you could use to teach your class or use in your scholarly works, there is just so much of that work you can use. For example, you may use 250 words of a poem or 1000 words of an essay, provided you have cited your source correctly or you have to be given permission by the author or creator and pay for it.
For those of you who have read my blog on First Amendment rights, it certainly seems like the primary reasons for copyright law is the dollar or money in a capitalist driven society and limiting access. A closer look shows there is another aspect to this law…the limiting of free speech when it comes to the world of academia. There was a way out of this box and god love the intellectuals and creative thinkers on the internet who came up with a licensing entity called Creative Commons. The license tells the user what changes can be made in four simple license stipulations and bypasses the conservative terms of the original copyright law by going directly to the creator and getting permission.
Once more we are free to gather information on the internet, share in the creative commons application and become as creative as we want to be without worrying about the Copyright cops ruining our career or that of our students. Dr. Sam did not create Creative Commons, but he led us to it and asked for a simple presentation we could create with other teammates. I loved it and thought it was brilliant. I think is was about that time I started wondering if he was a wizard…it does take a bit of magic to understand how all this works and then, to do it.
Finally, once I figured out one of my teammates was the administrator in Creative Commons (about 10-20 hours later) and I could not download directly to the presentation, things worked out pretty well (so far). I would probably have helped organized the team effort better, in hindsight. However I believe if you give people free rein, they will do what needs to be done without having to tell them what they need to do on a creative project. I would make it a bottom line rule not to delete or not use what each team member contributes. All team members are important contributors and any and every contribution creates the whole. The wizardry in this is making it a collaborative whole with meaning and presentation.
JOYSTECHTOOL 