A lot of my own work doesn’t necessarily allow for discussion with the students who take my courses. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts my interaction with the students is usually only through the course material. The materials that I create are self-directed student learning so my influence on student input is fairly minimal. In some of the courses students have an opportunity to post to forums and interact with each other. Although I don’t have a chance to create a direct discussion with the student I do have a chance to communicate expectations through the site policies and the descriptions of every activity. I’m also required to ensure that I have the rights to use any materials that I include. I do monitor the discussion boards, but I haven’t found any issues related to intellectual property violations yet.
The only way that I could completely ensure that there are no copyright violations would be to shut down the discussion forums and other activities where students create responses. That would result in what I would consider a lower quality program. I don’t think I’m willing to make that sacrifice at least now. In all likelihood I will need to re-evaluate my decision at some point. To be honest, I’m a little stuck on what will happen next. I need to keep these self-directed courses with minimal management.
I’m not sure how I feel about the question about cultures having the same view on intellectual property. I guess it depends on your definition of culture. If we’re just referring to legal jurisdictions then yes there are different approaches and attitudes, but I think that the question is probably broader than that. I’m willing to bet that even within our current class there are different opinions on how intellectual property is currently handled. To be honest on one hand I think that people should be given credit for their ideas and products, but I’m actually really grateful for people that decide to put pictures online for free, or contribute to creative commons projects.
As a bit of an aside, I’m curious if anyone has an opinion on how copyright laws may change in the internet age. Will a company’s approach copyright and trademarks become less restrictive, or more restrictive? How will the rise in open source and Creative Commons licences affect the perception of copyrighted material?