How some online undergraduate students understand copyright
✍ Scribed by Carlos Ovalle; Philip Doty
- Book ID
- 102508051
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 39 KB
- Volume
- 48
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0044-7870
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
When considering copyright, college-age students are often presumed to do nothing but misappropriate others' creative works or, even worse, act as so-called "pirates" as they share such work with others. Some copyright owners assert that such behavior is based on two foundations: ignorance of the law and an unwillingness to pay what is fair for creative works. But, when one looks carefully at what such young people believe and why they do what they do, the picture is more complex. The authors examined statements about copyright made by nearly 1,000 undergraduates over several semesters in a lower-division undergraduate elective offered online at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. This course, in its various iterations, has been offered since 1993. Copyright is one of the five modules required of all students in the course. The statements show the complexity of the students' attitudes about copyright and their engagement with many intractable conflicts about copyright and cultural production.
The copyright module provides a brief introduction to copyright. The instructors discuss the reasons for a copyright system and explore the major primary and secondary sources of copyright law in the U.S. The module examines the exclusive rights of rightsholders and exemptions to those rights available under law, followed by a discussion of copyright and digital material. This poster focuses on some of the themes identified by nearly one thousand students who have taken the course in the last two years, derived from the synchronous online chats and follow-up comments of the course participation assignment.