Presenters: Martine Courant Rife
Marcy Bauman
Leslie Farris
Workshop Description:
Our current “remix” culture complicates traditional understandings of plagiarism and fundamentally changes the ways in which we teach students how to ethically use others’ materials. This presentation provides a means for teachers to develop a dialogue with students on these issues.
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Plagiarism and Copyright
in the Digital Age
February 22, 2007
Dr. Marcy Bauman’s presentation on “Re-mix Culture” was especially stimulating and thought provoking.
Dr. Bauman began her presentation by rightly pointing out that we are teaching the first generation that had the ability to do audio and video production and distribution. She then pointed out that
- 33% of online teens share content
- 19% re-mix content
- 51% download music
Although the statistics were interesting, what particularly interested me was Dr. Bauman’s argument that in the re-mix culture, we are seeing a new form of language that has the attributions of speech; not writing. As with speech, much of the meaning in re-mix culture is inferential where the individuals involved in the conversation understand relevance, negotiate meaning, and share a context.
As part of her presentation, Dr. Bauman used the following You Tube videos to illustrate her point.
As I listed to Dr. Bauman speak, I reflected on two points. First, the idea that video production is conversational made a great deal of sense to me. This semester in my early American history class, I have been dealing with the issue of being involved in a national dialogue. Yet I had not been able to make a connection to the social networking sites and conversation.
The second idea was how poorly many members of the faculty provide documentation when we re-mix materials for our classes. For example, how many of us provide citations for the images we include in our PowerPoint presentations?
A few years ago, I realized that I was not modeling the behavior I was demanding of my students. Although I would not have used this terminology until I heard Dr. Bauman’s talk, I realized that I was re-mixing material for PowerPoint presentations without providing attribution. In my case, I asked the question, “How can I demand that students not plagiarize their assignments when I am not providing documentation for the material I am ‘stealing’ off the Internet?” Since that realization, I have become much more careful in using materials.
I put the word stealing in quotation marks because the material I was using was, I honestly believe, covered by fair use. But I was not being fair to the authors of the materials by not crediting their work during my lecture.
In this reflection, I have not concentrated on the portion of the presentation done by Professor Rife and Professor Farris. I already knew most of the material on the difference between plagiarism and copyright that they presented. My previous knowledge—as I argued in "Copyright Law and the Visual Artist"—is not negative reflection on their presentation.
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