The Wonderful World of Disney

As a former teacher in multimedia, I have remained very aware about copyright issues. Adding to that, moving from the United States to Canada has given me an interesting perspective on two similar but varying copyright laws. Personally I am very torn on modern copyright and think that those people who are in power have abused the original purpose of copyright. So it is definitely an issue that I am conflicted about when teaching. On the one hand, I do not want to tell my students to break the law, however, if you feel a law is unjust, it is our duty to challenge it. Hence why I like to bring up the issues of copyright in my classroom. As teachers, we have a unique opportunity to use copyrighted works for educational purposes and I think that we need to push that as much as we can. I would regularly show a documentary called Good Copy, Bad Copy in my class that touches upon the various copyright laws around the world. It was an excellent discussion starter because it challenged the commonly held belief that without copyright, artists would never make any money. It has made me very upset that with the recent Trans Pacific Partnership, copyright laws that are vastly different than those in North America are being forced upon their citizens without the proper discussions. Unfortunately for our students they will be finding themselves in a world where the idea of public domain is a fantasy. There will always be a corporation that chooses to profit from someone’s old work than to let people enjoy it without restriction. I seriously wonder how these laws are going to affect artists in the future and I think we need to bring these issues to light within our classrooms.