Old Laws/New Media/teachingguide

Topic Owners: Shubham Mukherjee, Debbie Rosenbaum, Matt Sanchez

Teaching Guide for Old Laws/New Media

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Precis

The purpose of this page is to provide additional teaching insights into presenting a class on Old Laws/New Media

Class Overview

As you can see, the class is divided into three parts:

• Part I. Background
• Part II. Case study: RIAA vs. Tenenbaum
  • RIAA's use of the Copyright Act
  • RIAA's use of the Copyright Act's statutory damages framework to Internet users
  • New Technology vs. Courtroom Norms
• Part III. Closing Discussion: Which are the most promising ways to adjust old laws to new media?

The class is based on a theory-and-practice model. The structure of this class is an hourglass: starting with the largest topic, honing in on particular issues associated with that theme, and then broadening the discussion in the end to leave students thinking about further applications. We executed the class using a variety of software tools to encourage conversation on various levels, although the conventional wisdom is that class discussion are far deeper and meaningful without student access to their laptops.

As you can see, the topic leaves lingering questions. And that's okay.

Resources

We encourage presenters to have a background familiarity with the basic copyright cases and some exposure to the various arguments on these topics in order to ensure a balanced presentation of the material. Some helpful resources to prepare:

• Promises to Keep by Professor Fisher
• Restructuring the Fair Use Doctrine by Professor Fisher
• David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists – AndMegastars
• David Pogue, "The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality" (NY Times, Dec 20, 2007)
• John Perry Barlow, The Economy of Ideas, 2.03 WIRED 84 (1994)
• Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. v. Grokster, 125 S. Ct. 2764 (2005)

Tools / innovations for the presentation

For our version of the class, we divided the students into three groups to best make use of various communications tools that supplemented the old methods of class interaction. Each group utilized a tool in a way that builds upon other groups' actions and furthers the class dialogue.

Analysis: We found the various use of new media to be both enhancing and distracting. On a whole, students are not quite used to the multi-tasking that is required by twittering, thinking about questions, responding to statements, and actually paying attention to a speaker. We believe that there is continued value in supplementing a class based on old laws/new media with some new media class interaction -- considering that it underscores the very topic of the class. But we advocate that recommendation with some hesitation as it does distract some students from fully paying attention during presentations.

• Question Tool
  • Question tool questioner group: During class, please focus your online efforts on posting substantive questions to the question tool. The questions can be just general questions to the class, or directed to one or more of the individuals debating at the time. If you want to tweet or vote on questions, you can of course do that. But we are hoping that you will form the core group that will keep generating fresh candidate questions that people can vote on. And it would even be great if you want to post questions in advance of class. Here is the question tool.

• • Question tool voting group: During class, please focus your online efforts on voting for questions that the “Question tool questioner team” has been generating. If you want to tweet or pose questions yourself, you can of course do that. But we are hoping that you will focus your efforts on voting so that we can see some active “flocking” towards the questions that are of the most interest. In an ideal world, the moderator of the debate will have nothing more to do other than read off the highest vote-getting question. Here is the question tool.

• Twitter group: As part of the RIAA case, one of the technologies we have been experimenting with is twitter. We encourage you to check us out at: http://twitter.com/joelfightsback twitter.com/joelfightsback]. For this class, tag your Tweets with "#iif" and"#joelfightsback. During class, please focus your online efforts on making substantive tweets on #iif. If you want to post a question on the question tool or vote on the question tool, you can of course do so. But we would like you to view "twitter" as your main responsibility. We are hoping that you will be the core group that will keep the twittering going.

All groups were encouraged to reference the JoelFightsBack Website during class. The Tenenbaum defense team created the website to help supporters follow the case and interact with the team.

Good luck!