I’ve taken the title of my proposal from Jennifer Rothman’s February 6, 2012 op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle where she argues, “Instead of providing for sharing […] important [civic] moments, our government has been complicit in endorsing a vision of copyright law in which nothing is free for use by the public.” Today (January 1, 2013), the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University published its annual Public Domain Day list of works that would have entered the public domain had the copyright term not been extended, via the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension, from 56 years to life plus 70 years (or 95 years for corporate authors). A case currently pending in the Supreme Court involves the continued viability of the “first sale” doctrine and textbooks. I’m used to being the “copyright person” at these sorts of un-gatherings, and so I’m going to beat once again the copyleft drum and propose a session in which we brainstorm strategies for “occupying the public domain.”
So much of the work described in the proposals posted thus far would be greatly facilitated by students and teachers having the right to remix or reuse existing work and publish the results publicly on the web or elsewhere. What is being done at our institutions and by us personally to secure that right? What can we do to make the regulatory system more hospitable to the work we do (or would like to do) in the classroom? Why does all of the conversation about “educational” fair use seem to center around course management systems and what can and cannot be copied (consumed), while neglecting the issues presented by students as user/producers of copyrighted work?
Robin, I wonder to what extent this session should also consider how open we make our own teaching materials. At the risk of self-linking too much, I wrote a post for ProfHacker about Forking Your Syllabus and making other parts of your teaching materials open source. Are these related topics?
I think you’re right that these are related questions. Copyright can often pose obstacles to opening one’s syllabus and course site. Institutions also have different IP policies, with some requiring faculty to assign to the institution broad rights in materials, like syllabi and lecture notes, that have traditionally not been considered work for hire. If you don’t own your syllabus, you technically don’t have the right to make it open source. Institutions that require faculty to use closed, proprietary course management systems arguably limit faculty intellectual property rights as a practical matter, even if they don’t do so legally via contract. The ability to open up the work product of our pedagogy is an important part of making our pedagogy visible as scholarly work. I think it would be great to consider all of these problems together.