Quote #1, Major Theme:

“Fair use law is fluid, and hard for non-lawyers (and most non-IP lawyers, and even some IP lawyers!) to parse. However, both case law and legal/industry consensus have led to a collection of practices that are generally understood to constitute fair use.”

This quote summarizes the meat of Shaffer’s article, which hopes to navigate the confusing and complicated world of copyright law. In reading the different rules and regulations, looking at the graphs depicting different Creative Commons licenses and the different freedoms granted under copyright law, and finding all the different points in history where copyright law was different, changed, and gets much more complicated, it can get overwhelming pretty fast. Shaffer has managed to create a guide to simplify things, and to provide advice for educators in a similar position as he – an educator himself – has been in before. 

Quote #2, A Question:

“Copyleft, a play on the word “copyright,” is the practice of offering users of a work the right to freely distribute and modify the original work, but only under the condition that the derivative works be licensed with the same rights. It is similar to the “Share Alike” stipulation of the Creative Commons licenses”

I found it fascinating that such a thing as copyleft exists. Clearly there is some difficulty – for educators in particular – to navigate copyright laws, and I wonder what the controversy has been in order for copyleft to have been created in retaliation. Is it popular with educators? Is there a financial aspect, to make one’s material more affordable, like a textbook for college students, perhaps? Who else has pushed back on copyright stringency, and why?

Quote #3, A Point Worth Exploring:

“In 2000, a US appeals court ruled that it was illegal to break DRM even if what you intend to do with the data constitutes fair use. In 2010, however, a US appeals court ruled that it was only illegal to break DRM if you then used the newly unencrypted media illegally. It’s hard to know where the case law on DRM will ultimately settle, so proceed with caution (and with advice from someone who knows the law well).”

The article was published in 2016, and does state that copyright laws are apt to change. It left me wondering if any copyright laws had been updated, changed, or thrown out in the seven years since this article was published. It also mentions DVDs, but it doesn’t go into the specifics about streaming services or media that has been published entirely online, and it would be interesting to know where the laws regarding this digital media differ and remain the same in comparison.