DTC 356- WSU regulations

Fair Use. Such a simple idea that is incredibly hard to define. We have our four rules:

1 The purpose of the use (commercial versus educational),

2 The nature of the work (imaginative or entertaining versus factual or reportorial),

3 The amount and substantiality of the portion used (most of the work or the heart of the work versus a small portion of it), and

4 The effect on the market (is the creator losing a potential audience versus is the creator gaining a potential audience).

but even with these guides, many works are increasingly hard to define. At the university level this becomes more muddled because most work begins as educational but many then go on to serve more purposes. The University has rights to certain levels of regulations. If they want to block websites that allow downloading that's fine because they provide free internet. Anyone using this should have to respect their rules because other options are available. If you can't handle the restrictions, McDonalds also gives free wifi without any regulations. Also, it could be said that WSU is simply trying to protect themselves from ending up like the young man Lessig mentioned. These standards are fine. The most interesting relationship is between professors and their students.

 Alex Jarvis described himself as a 'Voluntarist' meaning that human actions should be voluntary. I think that this philosophy should be applied to work created by students and professors. By Lessig's, (and the law's), definition anything I create in a fixed form is mine. If I create a blog and use it to respond to questions from class, I have copyrights to those words. Now if a professor wants to use some of this writing as an example, should he have to ask my permission? I think this would depend on the use. Most of the time I think students should grant someone like a professor fair use. If they are using it to further the education system that a student is already a part of, then it should be free. Quotes from work, screen shots of a blog, etc. Attribution should be required but no monetary compensation. People should allow educational works to enhance further educational works. However, when the Professor makes money from a textbook he wrote using some work from his students, what happens then? Again, if he quotes a student and references their work, then it should be ok. If he takes an idea from the student's intellectual property and then writes and entire chapter based on that idea, then maybe the student should receive compensation.

           

We will always have copyright laws. They are unavoidable and so in that regards we need more regulation but the right kind of regulation. There are so many types of intellectual property and the uses differ even greater and the law needs to account for these subtleties. We should stay away from large general policies and focus on defining what situations are considered stealing. As a culture we should decide to what extent sharing/borrowing/stealing ideas should be allowed.

Side note:

A general "Don't be a dick" policy would be fantastic. People are getting too worked up about laws and retribution and they are failing to simply work together as a society. Hopefully a younger generation, built on piracy, will have better attitudes towards copyrights as they age and enter the professional market. I don't think anyone who has ever pirated a song or movie could be a jerk towards someone borrowing from them.