New Media Literacy is as much about critical thinking as anything else. And BP’s actions regarding the oil spill and their attempts to control the story can be informative.
In a recent examiner article it is revealed that BP has purchased a number of Google adwords ‘perhaps’ with the goal of redirecting searchers to BP content. The adwords included ‘oil spill’, ‘BP oil spill’, ‘Deepwater Horizon’ and ‘oil spill response’.
The article ends with a question we all should be asking, but perhaps should be asked of every search response, every ad, every blog post, comment, etc. What was their motivation?
The proposed Bill C-32 is perhaps most beneficial to educators over anyone else. With the implementation of this Bill, teachers will now be able to make use of copyright material for teaching purposes under certain circumstances, this runs along the same lines as the so called Fair Use policy in the USA although I have not identified the exceptions.
Secondly, for those of you who are teaching New Media Literacy and are encouraging students to mash up videos with music, much of which is under copyright, you will no longer be breaking the law. In fact, C-32 will go beyond Fair Use with this ‘YouTube Exception’ which allows such user generated, non commercial content.
This is a great start for teachers. I do wonder how it will play out with publishers and not infringe on their rights. I’ve included some excerpts below of the relevant articles of the Bill. If you wish to listen to an overview of the pros and cons, I encourage you to listen to Michael Geist’s commentary.
29.21 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an individual to use an existing work or other subject-matter or copy of one, which has been published or otherwise made available to the public, in the creation of a new work or other subject-matter in which copyright subsists and for the individual — or, with the individual’s authorization, a member of their household — to use the new work or other subject-matter or to authorize an intermediary to disseminate it, if
(a) the use of, or the authorization to disseminate, the new work or other subject-matter is done solely for non-commercial purposes;
(b) the source — and, if given in the source, the name of the author, performer, maker or broadcaster — of the existing work or other subject-matter or copy of it are mentioned, if it is reasonable in the circumstances to do so;
(c) the individual had reasonable grounds to believe that the existing work or other subject-matter or copy of it, as the case may be, was not infringing copyright; and
(d) the use of, or the authorization to disseminate, the new work or other subject-matter does not have a substantial adverse effect, financial or otherwise, on the exploitation or potential exploitation of the existing work or other subject-matter — or copy of it — or on an existing or potential market for it, including that the new work or other subject-matter is not a substitute for the existing one.
Production for Instruction
29.4 (1) It is not an infringement of copyright for an educational institution or a person acting under its authority for the purposes of education or training on its premises to reproduce a work, or do any other necessary act, in order to display it.
However, it goes on to add:
(3) Except in the case of manual reproduction, the exemption from copyright infringement provided by paragraph (1)(b) and subsection (2) subsections (1) and (2) does not apply if the work or other subject-matter is commercially available, within the meaning of paragraph (a) of the definition “commercially available” in section 2, in a medium that is appropriate for the purpose referred to in that paragraph or subsection, as the case may be. in those subsections.
