Wk1 Reading Blog EDMT:MAC

Wk1 Reading Blog EDMT:MAC

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to copyright laws as my 11 year-old aspiring writer, director, rapper, actor, musician, and all around digi-nerd son, will not stop talking about the travesty that will befall us all if we allow our congress to pass SOPA. His passion regarding this subject prompted me to do some digging. I did not just read the bill (not in it's entirety. It's a monster), but I went out looking for interpretations and insights on the subject at hand: piracy (directly correlating to the topic of copyright).

When I set out, I really had no strong opinion on the subject, but could generally say that I was of the "well, if you make it and own it you should be able to  profit from it" mindset. I still am, I just now have a different perspective on how best to profit from it. When I mentioned SOPA to a friend of mine, she gave me a link to a blog that she reads regularly: Paulo Coelho Blog, and I began to look at this issue from a different perspective. 

Paul Coelho is an author who became famous largely because his books were pirated during a time of a "severe paper shortage" in Russia. His blog post dedicated to his thoughts on SOPA tell of a story of pirated maifestos that helped to change the Soviet government and culminates in a cry to pirate everything he's ever done. Why? Quite simply, he wants his name and his art known to as many people as possible, because he loves to write AND the more people who know of him the more possible revenue streams.

After reading Paul's blog, I began to reflect on all of the things that I have been exposed to and later purchased because of possible initial copyright infringement: music, poetry, visual art, academic works, and movies, to name a few. I can guarantee that the creators have made more money off of me becoming aware of their works than they lost by my viewing or listening to their product once in an unauthorized fashion.

While Paul's blog got me to see that piracy or copyright infringement really isn't the end of artists livelihood, it was Larry Lessig's TED talk, Laws that Choke Creativity, that spoke to me as a teacher and someone just generally invested in today's youth. We, as educators and those associated with schools in this country, know full well about the demand to have our students' achieve on standardized tests. There is more of an emphasis placed on how well students do on answering multiple choice questions than there is on what they can create. Creation takes time and isn't subjective. It's hard to quantify progress via student made media or art, but it doesn't make it any less important. What is important, is that we don't handicap our students and their imaginations by limiting their exposure to great works because we fear that we will lose our modern day vocal chords due to today's "talking machine." 

See Lessig's more recent talk: Re-Examining the Remix