Kevin Kelly: Better Than Free

Kevin Kelly has an interesting piece on The Technium called Better than Free. His premise is that anything that can be copied can be put on the internet. Once it is on the internet it becomes available to anyone for free. Money can't be made from the original item in this new electronic landscape. Money can only be made from things that can't be copied. Here was the interesting part of the article for me. He gives eight possible ways that marketable value can be added. Eight things that can't be copied that are valuable to the consumer. I won't explain what he says, read the article. It's worth it.

In these changing times as major studios are trying desperately to hang onto an outdated business model that doesn't work in this new digital world, we seem to hear from the two extreme camps. "Pay me cause it's mine" or "I can get it for free and you can't stop me." It is nice to read a thoughtful piece that looks at how things might work out.

Good discussion article for the tech classroom. Good debate topic for a social studies classroom. I've already seen this mentioned on three other blogs I follow. It is going to generate a lot of discussion.

[Image: Captured from The Technium: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/01/better_than_fre.php]

If you outlaw cameras only outlaws will have cameras.

Right after writing about cameras being everywhere and the difficulty in stopping people from taking photographs in a concert venue, I read this article on BoingBoing; UK mall bans grandparents for trying to photo their grandkids. The article describes a couples experience in a shopping mall in the UK. They were stopped using their camera because taking photos was banned due to a "security risk."

"Oh but that could only happen in the UK. It wouldn't ever happen in the US," you say. How about Silver Springs, MD where a photographer was recently stopped from taking pictures.

Lots of bandwidth on this issue and it is only going to get more intense as cameras get smaller and more pervasive. This might be a good classroom discussion starter. I know it has me thinking.

[Image Source: Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/ Sony-DSCU10-1-3MP-Digital-Camera/dp/B00006JHTQ/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1199397124&sr=8-3 : Found this on Amazon after doing a search for "tiny camera".]

Cameras Everywhere

I didn't ever think that I would ever have a post about Paris Hilton on my blog.

Never say never.

This isn't going to be any deep think piece on her, her contribution to society, the role of the celebrity in today's world or even a fashion critique. I ran across a photo of her at a party and it wasn't Paris that caught my eye, it was all the cameras in the audience. (OK...so maybe I am getting old....but really, it was the cameras that caught my eye!) They weren't the usual big paparazzi style cameras. These were all small hand helds similar to the one I carry with me most of the time.




I grabbed the picture and messed around with it in Photoshop and was able to find 19 cameras being held up. The four in the back I guessed on. There were a few more that were just too blurry to call. But, in this snapshot of Ms. Hilton, there were at least 19 people in the crowd taking pictures. Probably a few professionals, but my assumption is that most of them are just regular folks who had their camera's with them.


I am also guessing that at an event like this, people come partly to see Paris Hilton. The management probably doesn't discourage their taking pictures. I posted earlier this month about an experience at a concert watching folks take pictures during the event with their cameras. I didn't mention that there was an announcement first thing asking patrons not to take pictures or record the performance. That didn't stop a large number of people from still doing it. I remember a time in my younger years when a camera or recording equipment would be confiscated if observed by any of the concert staff. What's a concert venue to do when pretty much every one coming into the theater now has the ability to record sound and pictures?

How do we define fair use and copyright in a world where what I see and what I hear can be saved so easily on my electronic devices?

[Image Source: FoxNews: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,319810,00.html]

Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers

Ran across this copyright chart while exploring the film fest site I wrote about yesterday. This may be familiar to many of you as something similar has hung on the wall near the copy machine in every school building I've ever worked.

When I have a question and want to check legalities, I am usually nowhere near the copy room. So, I downloaded the chart and it now has a place in my hard drive.

You can also point your students to this site and the downloadable PDF. Nice quick reference.

How creativity is being strangled by the law

Interesting talk by Larry Lessig about copyright. He is involved with the Creative Commons and has some interesting things to say about the extremists on both sides of the issue and what it's doing to our country and our culture.

Here is a rough quote from the video:

We live in this weird time. An age of prohibitions where in many areas of our life we live constantly against the law. Ordinary people live life against the law. And that is what we are doing to our kids. They live life knowing they live it against the law. That realisation is extraordinarily corrosive.

[Image: Original image taken from the TED web page on Larry Lessig: http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/view/id/167]