Image source: http://lusipurr.com/2013/05/02/editorial-the-difference-between-preventing-piracy-and-violating-consumers/ I will admit it, I have been know to engage in various levels of Internet piracy. I was never a supplier, but was always one of the thousands (and millions) of file sharers. I was using the technology back when the activity was hidden in the back channels of IRC. I had one friend who was caught on several occasions. His ISP got so tired of the constant fight so they hired him to seek out the pirates. However, in my old age my illicit activities on the Internet have dropped to zero (almost). Was I scared of ever getting caught? Not particularly, and this is what makes it appealing.
Anthony (2013) makes a case for Internet piracy. He states that it is usually the superfans that perform this activity. With the creation of Kickstarter and crowdfunded websites, the publishers of media are becoming obsolete. You want to make a movie, go to the fans to fund it rather than some big multinational corporation. Many albums, movies, and video games (most pirated) have been successfully funded by Kickstarter. If you take a look at the website (Kickstarter) you will see that there are multiple projects that have raised over and above what they needed.
What implications does it have in the classroom? The days of owning a license to specific software are over. I recently found out that Microsoft has switched from selling licenses for Office software and switched to a subscription service. In order to use the software you must continually pay Microsoft a fee. If the fee stops, so does the service. The beliefs of these large companies are directly contradicting what students are learning in the classroom. We attempt to teach them collaboration and sharing, whereas the real-world is anything but. It is no wonder many young people latch on to P2P services.
Once again it falls on the teacher and those closest to the student to be good stewards of the Internet. It is through our model that the students will learn. Another particularly bright student (he's going to do engineering at Stanford) create a software program that allowed students to keep track and log their volunteer hours. He could have marketed the software and made some money, but instead he chose to release the software as public domain. A few other schools asked for permission to use his program and there was no issue. This is the world these students live in.
I believe digital citizenship is about students critically thinking about what they are doing online. What are the implications of my actions? Are there any alternatives? These are questions that students should be (and I think are) asking themselves. My original motivations for 'piracy' was financially driven. I even referred to my old pirate sites as 'the student video store'. A neat comic (link here, be careful some aspects are risque) shows that people (more often than not) exhaust all possibilities before using this tech. I know I do.
My goal as an educator is to educate the students about digital citizenship. Many of us have learned in PSI and PSII that spouting out rules a regulations is an ineffective practice. We show them that it is okay to share intellectual property through dropbox and google drive, but then turn around and tell them NOT to do this in the real world. Teaching students to think critically and make ethical decisions will serve them better in the future than having them memorize rules and regulations.
References
Anthony, S. (2013). A Case for Piracy. PC Magazine, June edition, pp. 35-38.
Significant Comments
http://ed4764muirhead.weebly.com/1/post/2013/07/web-awareness-ii-digital-citizenship.html?
http://summerschoolsalmon.weebly.com/1/post/2013/07/topic-9-web-awareness-part-2.html?
Anthony (2013) makes a case for Internet piracy. He states that it is usually the superfans that perform this activity. With the creation of Kickstarter and crowdfunded websites, the publishers of media are becoming obsolete. You want to make a movie, go to the fans to fund it rather than some big multinational corporation. Many albums, movies, and video games (most pirated) have been successfully funded by Kickstarter. If you take a look at the website (Kickstarter) you will see that there are multiple projects that have raised over and above what they needed.
What implications does it have in the classroom? The days of owning a license to specific software are over. I recently found out that Microsoft has switched from selling licenses for Office software and switched to a subscription service. In order to use the software you must continually pay Microsoft a fee. If the fee stops, so does the service. The beliefs of these large companies are directly contradicting what students are learning in the classroom. We attempt to teach them collaboration and sharing, whereas the real-world is anything but. It is no wonder many young people latch on to P2P services.
Once again it falls on the teacher and those closest to the student to be good stewards of the Internet. It is through our model that the students will learn. Another particularly bright student (he's going to do engineering at Stanford) create a software program that allowed students to keep track and log their volunteer hours. He could have marketed the software and made some money, but instead he chose to release the software as public domain. A few other schools asked for permission to use his program and there was no issue. This is the world these students live in.
I believe digital citizenship is about students critically thinking about what they are doing online. What are the implications of my actions? Are there any alternatives? These are questions that students should be (and I think are) asking themselves. My original motivations for 'piracy' was financially driven. I even referred to my old pirate sites as 'the student video store'. A neat comic (link here, be careful some aspects are risque) shows that people (more often than not) exhaust all possibilities before using this tech. I know I do.
My goal as an educator is to educate the students about digital citizenship. Many of us have learned in PSI and PSII that spouting out rules a regulations is an ineffective practice. We show them that it is okay to share intellectual property through dropbox and google drive, but then turn around and tell them NOT to do this in the real world. Teaching students to think critically and make ethical decisions will serve them better in the future than having them memorize rules and regulations.
References
Anthony, S. (2013). A Case for Piracy. PC Magazine, June edition, pp. 35-38.
Significant Comments
http://ed4764muirhead.weebly.com/1/post/2013/07/web-awareness-ii-digital-citizenship.html?
http://summerschoolsalmon.weebly.com/1/post/2013/07/topic-9-web-awareness-part-2.html?
RSS Feed