Should Edgar have to obtain the magazine’s permission before doing his linking? Should the magazine enjoy complete control, so that K-12 readers have to pass through the requisite amount of advertising before they can see the article? What if Alice in Kansas City wants to e-mail copies of a digitized newspaper article to her classmates – or, for that matter, to young people in Singapore or Hong Kong? Some in publishing would brand her an international copyright criminal … Questions also arise about libraries, both the school kind and the public libraries on which the K-12 community so heavily relies. In the past only one student at a time could check out a book. But today just a single library could put online a copyrighted book for thousands and perhaps millions for students to read.
Predictor: Rothman, David
Prediction, in context:In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various issues related to networking technologies. The department convened the authors for a workshop in November 1995 to discuss the implications. The following statement is taken from one of the white papers, “Copyright and K-12: Who Pays in the Network Era?,” by David Rothman, a member of the Consortium for School Networking and author of “Networld!: What People are Really Doing on the Internet and What it Means to You.” Rothman writes: ”What delights this global community … may horrify copyright holders … Serious questions arise [for instance] about links – one of the chief means through which users of the Web can share knowledge. Edgar might be doing a high school term paper on the Gulf War and oil prices, and he may find just the right story in a commercial database available for free on the Internet. He might paraphrase from a news magazine article and highlight the article’s headline in a special color. Then his readers could speed directly the article for the full details. All they would have to do is click their mouse on the headline, and their computers would enter the Web area of the magazine. Edgar wouldn’t have copied from magazine, but some would say that the effect would be the same. Should Edgar have to obtain the magazine’s permission before doing his linking? Should the magazine enjoy complete control, so that K-12 readers have to pass through the requisite amount of advertising before they can see the article? What if Alice in Kansas City wants to e-mail copies of a digitized newspaper article to her classmates – or, for that matter, to young people in Singapore or Hong Kong? Some in publishing would brand her an international copyright criminal … Questions also arise about libraries, both the school kind and the public libraries on which the K-12 community so heavily relies. In the past only one student at a time could check out a book. But today just a single library could put online a copyrighted book for thousands and perhaps millions for students to read. This would be illegal, and no self-respecting librarian or educator would treat a copyrighted work this way. But the technological capability exists.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Copyright/Intellectual Property/Plagiarism
Name of publication: The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning
Title, headline, chapter name: Copyright and K-12: Who Pays in the Network Era?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney