Would you steal a car? Reflections on Intellectual Property Rights

Would you steal a car?

In the world of intellectual property and copyright, that is an argument that you will hear from anti-piracy organizations. Indeed, we have seen advertisements that ask you not to pirate movies or music, just like you would not steal a car or any other physical object. While that is true, is stealing a movie by downloading it the same as stealing a car?

- Yes.. I know that is not the original one but I thought that it was pretty funny.

Intellectual property in a nutshell protects:

• Patents
• Trademarks
• Copyrights
• Trade Secrets

Now, most of these do not really affect us. If you are an inventor, then you may patent your invention. This will protect your invention and nobody else will be allowed to come up with a product using the same patents. A trademark protects a brand name, a word or a slogan, or a symbol of a logo that identifies a product. As an example, if you come up with a product, then you would not be allowed to use the slogan “Just do it” to brand your product. However, something that does affect a lot of people is copyright.

Copyright protects original work of authorship. That means that if someone writes a book, then they own it. If someone makes a movie or a song, then they own it. However, for a price they are willing to let you use it for personal use. You are not allowed to make use of it commercially or make money without a specific deal with the original author. So if you have ever downloaded a song or a movie, then you are a pirate and according to the law you have infringed on someone's copyrighted material.

However, some have argued that downloading really is not stealing in the original meaning of the word. Nobody gets something physical taken away from them, like if I stole your watch. But anti piracy groups argue that you are essentially taking money out of the pockets of original authors by downloading it illegally instead of buying it. This is where there is a dillemma:
* Would you have actually been willing to pay for this product?

* Maybe if you like the product you will go out and buy it. Will this redeem you?

If piracy really is stealing, then I have to admit that I used to be a serial-offender. I have not “stolen” anything for a few years though, mind you. But reading about intellectual property rights takes me back to the 90s when everybody was using Napster. You have probably heard about sites like ThePirateBay, Kazaa and iMesh. If you have not heard about Napster, then it was similar to that, only easier, and at the time it was the biggest file sharing site on the planet. The online market is not the same as it was back then. 10 years ago, you did not have Spotify as a legal method to listen to music. Nor did you have excellent online stores that sold you downloadable music. The only real options you had were to either go to a shop and buy the CD, or buy a physical CD online and wait for it to arrive in the snail mail. In a culture where we need something “instant” - and can also get it “instant”, then it is hard to make us wait for a CD or a DVD to arrive at our home if we can get it within a few hours by looking online for it.

Now, thankfully, we have bot legal and semi-legal ways to get our fix “instantly”. I am talking about the already mentioned Spotify. But also Youtube has a lot of great material. No doubt a lot of it is actually infringing on someone's intellectual property, but the user viewing the video is not the one technically in breach of copyright law, only the uploader is. Youtube has been heavily criticized over the years for failing to stop infringement of intellectual property rights, but in the last few years they have made software that recognizes copyrighted material and automatically removes it.

Would you steal a car? Would you download a movie or a song?

Data Retention and the DRD

The data retenton directive was voted in to law just a few days ago here in Norway and I do not know how to feel about it. On one side I feel as I should be against it because I do not want anyone to retain information about me, but on the other side I feel that it is the right thing to do because it may prevent serious criminal activity.

To me there is little doubt that there is need for this directive. It was agreed between EU member states after the New York, Madrid and later London terrorist attacks that there was a need for such a directive. It was voted in to law in 2006 in the EU, but here in Norway it was voted in to law just last week, april 4^th 2011. Our version of the Directive is slightly more liberal because the Government can only store data for 6 months, whereas within the EU they are required by law to retain the data for a minimum of 6 months and up to two years.

This video explains what information the Norwegian Government wants to retain:

For telephone calls, they want to save information like:

• Who you are talking to
• How long you are talking to them
• Where you are when you are talking to someone
• Technical details about your phone device

For internet use they want to retain the following information:

• When you are online
• Your IP address
• How long you are online
• Who you e-mail and when
• Information about your computer

All this information can be used against you if you or someone you have communicated with have committed a crime.

They government claims that nobody outside will have access to the information retained, so it should be safe and secure. However, how much can we really trust the government? Just last month I read an article about the practice of POT, now the Norwegian Police Security Service, hadled evidence. A guy who had since retired kept evidence in his personal safe, at his own home for years.

It is episodes like that which makes the DRD a tough pill to swallow for opponents. But they also argue that the principles of the DRD are bad. In the past, the police needed a reason to investigate you, and a court order to be allowed to monitor your activities. Now, the data is already there for them, going back six months. StoppDLD, one of the leading organizations who tried to prevent the implementation of the directive, argued that in a free and open society, one should not have to be monitored by anyone if you have not done anything wrong. But even they agree that there is little doubt that the data retention directive will be useful when trying to catch criminals or even terrorists.

But still. Norway, as well as the majority of the EU member states, are liberal democracies. That does not mean that they are all run by liberal governments, but it means that we have certain indisputable rights, and the right to privacy is listed as one of them.

What do you think: Are you for or against the Data Retention Directive? Are you concerned that someone may look at your activities even if you know that you have not done anything wrong?

Web 2.0 and social meda - can we use it for teaching?

Web 2.0 can is about sharing information, expanding knowledge and communicating.

I am new to blogging, and when I discussed my blogging with a friend he said that blogging is "the most useless thing ever".  Maybe a typical hyperbolic statement from someone who does not know what it is, but I would probaby have said the same thing before I started writing on this.

However now that I have had time to think about it, I find that blogging is a useful genre, and that it can easily be used for educational purposes. Why does every report have to be written with so many formal rules? In the blog world, you make your own rules. Not only is it a fun way to learn things, but you also have the opportunity to share your work.

Schools have already been using learning management systems like Moodle, Its Learning, Fronter etc for a long time, and that has made is much easier for pupils and teachers to communicate with each other. Now they can send files or communicate instantly, and not have to wait until they meet at school. Those platforms have lots of Web 2.0 features, like blogs and forums and wikis.

When I was at a school for my mandatory teaching practice only a few weeks ago, I asked how they used their LMS. I was told that they only used it to send feedback to pupils on their assignments. What a waste!

I asked what they were working on, and he said that they were currently working on historical persons in the United States. I asked "why not make a wiki?" only to be laughed at.

Making a wiki is free of charge, and you can learn just as much by creating a wiki as you would creating a report. Not only that, if you create a wiki, you will have the information forever, and if someone wants to, they can expand it. Who knows, within maybe a few months or maybe a few years the school could actually have had a small-scale wikipedia of their own.

Do you use Web 2.0 actively in your teaching?

ICT In schools, are we really ready for it?

I have been reading Ola Erstad's book "Digital kompetanse i skolen" (digital literacy in school) and I am a bit surprised to say the least about what he is writing about.

Now.. I am not surprised that he is writing how ICT is something that we see more and more of in schools. There is little anyone could do to stop that. But I am surprised how little ICT seems to be a factor in the schools. At least according to him.

The report "Personalistion and Digital technologies" says that that "by the age of 21 the average person will have spent 15,000 hours
in formal education, 20,000 hours in front of the TV, and 50,000 hours in front of
a computer screen". That is a lot!



There are no such reports for Norwegians in specific, but I did find a report that said that 94% of us have access to a computer and 93% of us have access to the Internet in one form or another. Also a lot!

Another report suggests that only 2% of young people aged 9-16 do not have access to a computer, and only 1% do not have access to the Internet. The same report goes on to explain that the majority of the time online is spent playing games, watching movies, chat and social media. 56% of these young people use the Internet for educational purposes.

All these reports seem to suggest one thing: We use the computer and Internet. A lot.

We all know that with Kunnskapsløftet, we got another "basic skill" if we can call it that. The pupils are now supposed to use digital tools in all subjects. ICT is not something that is "new" in school. I am sure you have all been to the basement of a school and seen those old computers with those big "floppy" disks. They used to learn "EDB", and then for a while it was "IT". When my brother went to school he got to use computers a lot. I am only three years younger than him, and by the time I started going to the same school, the computer classes stopped for some reason.

Fast forward again to the 21st century and we see in a ITU report that ICT is not as much in use as maybe it should be. I say "should be" because if you look at the reports I mentioned earlier, it says that young people will spend way more time in front of their computer than anything else. Is it not only reasonable that the school mirrors their daily life, and that they get to use computers and the Internet for their school work, just as they prefer to use the computer for educational purposes at home?

We see on page 10-11 in the ITU report that when the computer is actually in use, it is mostly for writing in Norwegian. In 7th grade, 31% say that they use the computer for writing in an average week. In 9th grade the number is higher, 37%. For reading in Norwegian using the computer the numbers are 24% for 7th graders and 22% for 9th graders.

For mathetmatics, on an average weekly basis a only 17% of 7th graders will use the computer, and for 9th graders the number is 14.3%. For science the number is 20% and 22.5%, and for english the numbers are 22% and 23.9%.

I find that those numbers are lower than I expected. Especially when the same ITU report goes on to explain that Norway is actually one of the leading countries in computers per student.

     (https://barbariangroup.com/assets/users/lweber/images/0000/8730/OldManComputer_-_social_what-ia.jpeg)

Erstad goes on to explain that on average, the teacher will spend more time in fromt of the computer at the school than the pupils. And when the teacher uses the computer, it is not incorporated in to the actual teaching, but mostly for their own preparation.

I think that this may be a sign of a lack of digital literacy. Do the teachers not know how to use ICT for teaching purposes? Do they just prefer the old method of teaching by using the blackboard?

How much do you let your pupils use the computer in class?

Hello World!

Hello!

My name is Alexander and I am a student studying ICT and teaching. This blog will primarily be about that. You will find some posts on my old blog.