EDUCAUSE Review Articles and Copyright

"File sharing serves as a tuning fork for an entirely new orchestra of digital communication, interaction, and social expectation. We in higher education must provide a clear, calm, ringing voice in defining
the terms of the new world when we believe our goals and values are important not only to us but to society."

Educational institutions should be actively rethinking how they are accessing and using copyrighted visual arts images, and they should be exploring an approach that seeks to address copyright owners’ interests, as well as users’ needs, in an environment that encourages increased, shared access to these images for teaching and study.

"DRM technology represents an attempt to treat bits like atoms. "Watermarks" allow two otherwise identical collections of bits to be viewed as different objects. Biometric-based encryption can restrict access to only the current "holder" of the bits. Elaborate check-in/check-out schemes constrain a particular set of bits to "exist" in only one place at a time. Rather than rethinking their approach to copyright and developing new business models appropriate to the digital world, proponents of DRM technology are devoting their ingenuity and energy to trying to make bits behave like atoms in order to preserve the old ways. "

The technology-driven disruptions of the knowledge economy offer higher education an enormous opportunity to remake ourselves - this time around collaboration, exploration, and engagement with the wider world.

The author gives an overview of the creative commons and science commons licenses and publishing options.

The author discusses the issue of copyright, oldies, and digital preservation. The author talks about efforts being made to create digital sound repositories for music record prior to 1970.

The author discusses the transformation on the college campus from the free exchange of ideas to the growing movement to lock down those ideas as "property".

The author discusses copyright's fail use doctrine.