{"id":98,"date":"2007-09-02T06:49:49","date_gmt":"2007-09-02T13:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/a-teachable-moment-about-copyright-from-the-sfwa"},"modified":"2016-10-01T15:06:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T22:06:22","slug":"a-teachable-moment-about-copyright-from-the-sfwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/a-teachable-moment-about-copyright-from-the-sfwa","title":{"rendered":"A Teachable Moment about Copyright from the SFWA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, I now have a terrific &#8220;teachable moment&#8221; when I start school on Tuesday. When my students ask me what I did on my summer vacation I can tell them I was accused of violating copyright and learned all about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the SFWA and counter-notifications. I can tell them the reading list I just handed them is Internet contraband. I can tell them the president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America personally apologized to me on my blog.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been teaching my students about copyright for years, but now I have a personal experience to help make it real. If you&#8217;re an educator who teaches students about copyright, this would make a great story to use in your class, too. It&#8217;s controversial, it&#8217;s got two sides, and it&#8217;s on the cutting edge of law and ethics.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s my time line of the situation:<\/p>\n<p>August 27, 2007&#8211;I write this post about an email I received from Scribd:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/sfwa-accuses-teen-literacy-of-copyright-violation\">SFWA Accuses Teen Literacy of Copyright Violation<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>August 28, 2007&#8211;The editors of <a href=\"http:\/\/raygunrevival.com\/\">Ray Gun Revival<\/a> write their own post about how the back issues of their magazine were removed from Scribd:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/phywriter.com\/archives\/2007\/08\/28\/sfwa-issues-misguided-rgr-takedowns-at-scribd\/\">SFWA Issues Misguided Takedowns at Scribd<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>August 30, 2007&#8211;Science fiction writer (and member of the SFWA) Cory Doctorow writes a terrific article about the issue on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\">Boing Boing<\/a>, the second most-linked-to-blog in the world:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2007\/08\/30\/science-fiction-writ-1.html\">Science Fiction Writers of America Abuses the DMCA<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Also on August 30&#8211;Michael Capobianco, SFWA president, begins leaving comments on blogs, apologizing for the erroneous DMCA notices.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/sfwa-accuses-teen-literacy-of-copyright-violation#comment-153\">Teen Literacy Tips Apology<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/phywriter.com\/archives\/2007\/08\/28\/sfwa-issues-misguided-rgr-takedowns-at-scribd\/#comment-2051\">Ray Gun Revival Apology<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>August 31, 2007&#8211;<a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\">Ars Technica<\/a>, another top ten blog, has this to say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20070831-improper-dmca-takedowns-come-to-the-final-frontier.html\"> Worse than Vogon poetry: bogus DMCA takedowns stun sci-fi lovers<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>August 31, 2007&#8211;Michael Capobianco, SFWA president, issues this statement on the SFWA web site:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/news\/2007\/sfwascribd.htm\">The Official SFWA Statement Regarding Removal of Works from Scribd<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>September 1, 2007&#8211;Fred von Lohmann, Senior Intellectual Property Attorney for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\">Scribd<\/a>, sends the following letter to SFWA Vice President Dr. Andrew Burt:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/268111\/Scribds-Official-Response-to-the-Science-Fiction-and-Fantasy-Writers-Association-SFWA\">Scribd&#8217;s Official Response to the SFWA<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>**Update September 3, 2007<\/strong>&#8211;The SWFA Board passes a motion to disband the ePiracy Committee:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/community.livejournal.com\/sfwa\/31606.html\">SWFA ePiracy Committee Activities Suspended<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>**Update September 11, 2007<\/strong>&#8211;Scribd president Jared Friedman re-enables my list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/208279\/300-Recommended-Books-for-Junior-High-Students\">300+ Recommended Books for Junior High Students<\/a> after not hearing back from the SFWA about my counter-notification.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll continue to update this time line as new developments occur.<\/p>\n<p>If you decide to share this with your students, here are some more copyright resources:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A fantastic ten-lesson unit for junior high students for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readwritethink.org\/lessons\/lesson_view.asp?id=939\">creating public service announcements on copyright awareness<\/a> from ReadWriteThink.org and the National Council of Teachers of English<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gseis.ucla.edu\/iclp\/dmca1.htm\">An overview of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a> from the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikisource.org\/wiki\/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act\">Text of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act<\/a> on Wikisource<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.utsystem.edu\/OGC\/Intellectualproperty\/cprtindx.htm\">A Crash Course in Copyright<\/a> from the University of Texas System<\/li>\n<li>A somewhat dated but still useful <a href=\"http:\/\/home.earthlink.net\/~cnew\/research.htm\">guide to Fair Use and Copyright for Teachers<\/a> from Cathy Newsome<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, I now have a terrific &#8220;teachable moment&#8221; when I start school on Tuesday. When my students ask me what I did on my summer&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[280,281,153,283,158,282,156,154],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lessons","tag-ars-technica","tag-boing-boing","tag-copyright","tag-digital-millenium-copyright-act","tag-jared-friedman","tag-michael-capobianco","tag-scribd","tag-sfwa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPveS-1A","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}