Oh my sweet lord. Now I’ve seen it all. Thanks to Claude for giving me the heads up on this… this… this abomination. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you… Captain Copyright
“Access Copyright has launched a new site that borders on parody, but is apparently serious. Captain Copyright, is a new “superhero” that educates children about the virtues of copyright, rushing to the scene in the event that someone publishes research without proper credit. While my first reaction to the site was that it is just silly, as I dug deeper, I now find it shameful. These materials, targeting kids as young as six years old, mispresents many issues and proposes classroom activities that are offensive.
“Activity Two seeks to build respect for the copyright symbol by asking the grade one students to role play by seeking copyright permission and to sell their copyright work. Activity Three asks the students to picture a world without copyright and to discuss whether their favourite book or song would still be created. Activity Six celebrates creativity by having the class create a group book with an additional page for the copyright notice. Activity Seven envisions grade one students creating their own copyright permission form.”
You MUST be kidding me! So I went over to look at the site, and there is a comic on there with the origins story of Captain Copyright, where as a kid he drew his first comic only to have a bully steal it and sell it as his own. Thus he swore to never allow unfair use of another persons intellectual property again! Yup… sure beats saving starving babies.
Ok, now to be fair… even though this looks like a shameless propaganda move targeted at children… to be fair it is the right thing for them to do. Instead of going around and suing people left and right, which only screws themselves in the end and doesn’t actually accomplish anything… I’d rather see them try to fight the problem with education and words.
So is this “Captain Copyright” totally shameless? Yes. But, it’s also a lot better and more intelligent of a move than using fear and the courts to try to get people to do things their way.
Your thoughts?
