So, now for my nice, honest rant about one of the most fallacious and erroneous policies on digital media: the laws of copyright. THIS WILL BE A LONG POST...sorry Prof, but I have strong feelings about this. Feel free to skip around if you like.
Perhaps the number one most controversial subject on digital media is the issue of copyright--with the digital age comes a whole new way of accessing media, and instead of requiring a copy machine, now you can just hit copy/paste in order to get something recorded. And with limitless methods of downloading copyrighted media for free, protection of said media is virtually impossible; whenever a counter is developed for one form of copying/downloading, a new method immediately springs up. This has given rise to an immense controversy in copyright, culminating into what could almost become a war of information ownership and protection.
Let me make something clear right now: as someone who is proud of my photography, I am all for protecting something that is your own work, and certainly wouldn't like it if someone used my photos without giving me any credit. Does that make me selfish? Maybe. That does NOT mean, however, that people can't enjoy my photos and using them for personal purposes...just don't use them for personal gain. Long story short, I DON'T MIND HAVING COPYRIGHT LAWS.
But let's face it, the existing laws suck. They are vague, confusing in many places, and over-generalized to the point where we don't know where to draw the line....the problem is, digital media itself is so dynamic, we really NEED to know where the line is drawn. A good example of this is academic integrity--perhaps the copyright policy I have the biggest problem with is academic integrity policies. Why?
Let me give an example. Here's a true story: my brother is a FANTASTIC writer. Like me, writing is in that man's blood. After turning in a very well-written, thought-out essay in his Perspective on Inquiry class, my brother got accused of plagiarism. The teacher's explanation? He claimed that the writing was so damn amazing, that he was convinced there was no possible way my brother could have done it all on his own. So instead of finding stuff that was plagiarized, looking online, or even just submitting it into ArticleChecker or any similar program, he just assumed and accused without any basis or proof. In the end, my brother was able to prove his innocence--quite easily--but the fact remains, current copyright policies in schools require only the mere SUSPICION from teachers that plagiarism is in effect, and that is completely inappropriate.
It seems that, no matter how much we students are warned of the consequences of copyright infringement, and no matter how many times we are encouraged to avoid it, it still inevitably happens to the best of us. Why? Are we really that stupid, or is it simply because we don't know WHERE TO DRAW THE LINE? What counts as plagiarism? What counts as infringement? In one of the readings we went through, it was quoted as saying: "It is important to know what is allowed and what is not when utilizing the information obtained."(Copyright) But it doesn't outline what those allowances are. Hell, did I even cite this right? Quotes, in-text citation, is that enough? For SOME teachers it is...and for some, it isn't...you see, I don't even know how to quote this copyright information without violating copyright (and now I'm ****ing CONFUSED), because there is no universal set of rules for this practice. Sure, there are a handful on this website I just mentioned, and yes they are pretty straightforward...but there are a lot of holes that still need patching. And if Teachers don't know where to draw the line with copyright (refer to story above), and can we as students be expected to understand then any better?
What is wrong
No comments:
Post a Comment