Comments about the Cost of Copyright Confusion Research

The report was really interesting and easy to read. The methods were not detailed very well. They recruited participants from organizations such as Alliance for Media Action, and NCTE, and some other organizations. They called people for 45 minute-1 hour interviews. I wanted to know if they paid these individuals to participate. Also, everyone who participated had their name listed, although they separated the comments from the names.

So, I'm wondering, if you know you are going to be named, wouldn't you make more of a point to say you were acting legally -- as many interviewees went to great lengths not to infringe. I also wonder about those who volunteered for interviews. Wouldn't those persons that volunteered be more likely to be invested in the topic because they had a bad experience?

Overall though, the report confirmed the findings in the pilot I did, as far as areas of misunderstanding. One main thing the report points to, is the misunderstanding about attribution and copyright. Attribution is thought of as a component of copyright, or legal use, but isn't. Ironically, NCTE posted a link to this report in its blog, and supplied materials that are supposed to help. Although, looking through the NCTE materials, one contains a flow chart that has attribution as a necessary step to being copyright legal. The other materials are lesson plans that have a kind of moral turn in favor of protecting the copyright holder. This is exactly the problem the report points to -- why it is ironic. The NCTE blog kind of said, here's a report that says teachers misunderstand copyright and fair use, now here's some lesson plans to address that. Unfortunately the lesson plans don't really emphasize fair use. And I can't imagine who has five, six class lessons to devote to the topic. I should think a class period is sufficient to at least raise the necessary issues and considerations.