Reading Assignment #5

Title: Rethinking Copyrights for the Library Through Creative Commons Licensing

Author: Cushla Kapitzke

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press

URL/Citation : Kapitzke, C. (Summer 2009). "Rethinking Copyrights for the Library Through Creative Commons Licensing". Library Trends, Volume 58, Number 1, Summer 2009, pp. 95-108. Retrieved, July 17, 2011 from Google Scholar.

Abstract of the article:

These two recent and related social developments of note for libraries are an upsurge in cultural participation enabled by Web 2.0 media and calls in government policy for enhanced innovation through education. Ironically, these have occurred at the same time that increasingly stringent copyright laws have restricted access to cultural content. Concepts of governmentality are used here to examine these tensions and contradictions. In particular, Foucault’s critique of the author figure and freedom as part of the will to govern within liberal democratic societies is used to argue for better quality copyright education programs in school libraries and library information science education programs. For purposes of teaching and research, copyrights are defined as agglomerations of legal, economic, and educational discourses that enable and constrain what can and cannot be done with text in homes, schools, and library media centers. This article presents some possibilities for renewal of school libraries around copyright education and Creative Commons licensing.

Three things I learned from my Reading Assignment:

• The trend toward privatizing information through copyright law is also at odds with the increased access to information through the internet and the widespread use of social networking tools wherein digital texts can be easily copied and edited.
• Strong copyright protection solves two (2) problems for governing authorities (e.g. copyright industries):
• it constructs a state of scarcity to keep prices high, and 
• it drives the so-called information/knowledge/creative economy, which advantages advanced capitalists nation-states such as US and Europe
• Creative Commons (CC) licensing is a worldwide philosophical movement and nonprofit organization which seeks to sustain and extend the information commons by assisting copyright owners to license their creative products upstream through open content licensing protocols. CC protocols use IPRs  which include four options for tagging creative artifacts:
• Attribution : Other people may use, modify and distribute the content as long as they give the original author credit.
• Non commercial : Other people may use, modify and distribute the content but for noncommercial purposes only
• No derivatives : Other people may use and distribute the content but cannot modify it to create derivative works.
• Share alike : Other people may modify the content and distribute derivatives but only on the condition that the derivatives are made available to people on the same license terms. 

Application / Implication of the new things I learned to my work / to me as a person:

As a librarian and a researcher, I will always see to it that proper credit is given to whom the credit is due, and one way is to indicate the references in my reports and research works at all times. I will also be responsible in the use of the resources I'll get, and be aware of their limitations/extent of use.