From around the place:
In A closed mind about an open world James Boyle looks at our response to knowledge networks.
It is not that openness is always right. Rather, it is that we need a balance between open and closed, owned and free, and we are systematically likely to get the balance wrong. Partly this is because we still do not understand the kind of property that exists on networks. Most of our experience is with tangible property; fields that can be overgrazed if outsiders cannot be excluded. For that kind of property, control makes more sense. We still do not intuitively grasp the kind of property that cannot be exhausted by overuse (think of a piece of software) and that can become more valuable to us the more it is used by others (think of a communications standard). There the threats are different, but so are the opportunities for productive sharing. Our intuitions, policies and business models misidentify both. Like astronauts brought up in gravity, our reflexes are poorly suited for free fall.
And on a similar subject (well sort of):
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has released a CC licensed white paper about the copyright difficulties faced by educators.
While the primary task of the foundational white paper was to identify these obstacles, the paper concludes with some discussion of paths toward reform that might improve the situation. It suggests that certain types of legal reform, technological improvements in the rights clearance process, educator agreement on best practices, and increased use of open access distribution would help overcome the obstacles we identified.
via Will Richardson
Be aware, of course that New Zealand does not (yet?) enjoy the same fair use provisions as other countries.
The Copyright Act, 1994.
A Readers Digest type summary of NZ Copyright Law from Consumer
A review of teacher’s copyrights from Mark Treadwell