The joke about marriage, “What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine” seems appropriate when discussing the tension between the concepts of intellectual property, copyright, Creative Commons and “information access for all”, especially when looked at in the context of school libraries.
Joyce Valenza’s blog post highlights a frustration that many teachers feel, myself included, that so many potentially educationally valuable websites (such as YouTube) are blocked in schools due to social networking policies. Valenza’s blog is almost a microcosm of the debate about the provision of information to all and copyright and intellectual property. She describes some ways to get around the block of YouTube, which seems to put her in the “information access for all” camp. In one of the comments on the post, Valenza is upbraided for setting a bad example to students for bypassing school internet policies and reminds us that downloading videos violates copyright and intellectual property rights. The commenter goes on to assert the importance of promoting digital citizenship amongst our students. As a future teacher librarian, I also plan to teach students about these values, but I haven’t had a good solution for this tension.
Jenkins et al.’s paper can be seen as complimenting Valenza’s vision. The digital divide is viewed in terms of “participatory cultures rather than … interactive technologies” (Jenkins, Clinton, Purushotma, Robison, & Weigel, 2006, p.8) and describes young people producing new creative forms through “digital sampling, skinning and modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups”. Many of these mashups would incorporate YouTube and other intellectual property of other people. I was struck by the revelation in the Pew study (quote by Jenkins et al) that “young people who create and circulate their own media are more likely to respect the intellectual property rights of others because they feel a greater stake in the cultural economy” (Jenkins, et al., 2006, p. 10). I myself have noticed stronger personal feelings about intellectual property since I began writing my own fiction. Perhaps this is one solution to this issue?
I must confess that I’m still grappling with these ideas.
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. 68. Retrieved from http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
Valenza, J. (2008, 28 January 2011). When YouTube is blocked (way more than eight ways around). http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/neverendingsearch/2008/12/19/when-youtube-is-blocked-way-more-than-eight-ways-around/