Captain Copyright shot down
p2pnet.net News:- Access Copyright’s farcical Captain Copyright has been flammed out of existence, deleted by a huge flood of online outrage.
The corporate ‘Super Hero’ starred in what was presented as an educational comic. But, While my first reaction to the site was that it is just silly, as I dug deeper, I now find it shameful, said University of Ottawa Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law Dr Michael Geist.
These materials, targeting kids as young as six years old, misrepresent many issues and proposes classroom activities that are offensive.
And, AC … publicly admitted that much of the torrent of criticism concerning CaptainCopyright has been justified, that some of what the Captain says is simply wrong, and that steps are being taken to redress this, says copyright lawyer Howard Knopf more recently.
Personally, I think that the most positive step by far would be capital punishment. It`s not complicated – just hit the delete key for the website.
Now, Captain Copyright Site Under Construction, says the site, continuing:
The Captain Copyright website and materials are undergoing a revision. The site was launched as a pilot project earlier this year and it is now time to take the feedback it has received and make the revisions needed to ensure this is the best possible tool for educators and their students. Thank you to all of the educators who have already used the materials and provided their positive feedback to us we`re working hard to make these tools even better for you and are looking forward to re-launching the site.
Thank you also to those who had more critical feedback: we heard you. We have secured a number of subject matter experts and educators to serve on an advisory panel to review and revise the existing Captain Copyright materials, as well as assist with the creation of new materials focusing on topics such as the Creative Commons, fair dealing, and the public domain. A complete list of their names and credentials will be released once it is finalized.
The Captain Copyright site was created for educators because they told us through surveys and focus groups conducted by an independent consultant that they needed tools to help them teach their students about copyright, but none were available. The tools on the Captain Copyright site will meet their needs and ensure that they can offer their students a complete and balanced understanding of copyright.
Another load of pure bovine excreta.
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August 18th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Unless Access Copyright disengages from this project the problem is only delayed, and will resurface in the future. The underlying problem is that a business model intermediary such as Access Copyright is going to have an extremely hard time providing a balanced view of copyright. Access Copyright is an administrative body for business models which seek to collect royalties from an increasing number of uses of creative works. The growing number of business models which fund the one-time costs of the production of creativity, allowing the marginal cost to users to be the marginal cost of production to the creator of zero, are not going to be adequately represented by Access Copyright.
One of the most critical steps to making Captain Copyright fulfil its claimed mandate of educating people about copyright issues is to allow an organization other than one representing intermediaries or business models to take it over. I don’t have a single organization in mind as I don’t think one exists, but a coalition of groups such as the Creators Rights Alliance (minus the collectives), Appropriation Art, CLUEcan.ca and others might be able to offer the required balance.