Average iPod Has Over 800 Illegally Downloaded Tunes

According to research by the University of Hertfordshire, young iPod owners in the United Kingdom are walking around with an average of 842 illegally copied songs. The survey, which questioned 1,200 participants, also revealed that nearly two-thirds of young people download music tracks illegally. The average is 53 songs per month. Probably not surprisingly, a further 42 percent of the 14- to 24-year-olds surveyed admitted to uploading music onto file-sharing networks.

"I was one of those people who went around the back of the bike shed with songs I had taped off the radio the night before. But this totally dwarfs that, and anything we expected," said Fergal Sharkey, former lead singer of The Undertones, and now chief executive of British Music Rights (BMR). BMR, which commissioned the research, is spearheading a campaign to make legal download services easier to use, and to make breaking copyright less appealing.

CopyCat Dos and Donts

You may not want to read this article on copying music. You may find that some things you assumed are legal, like copying your personal CD collection to your iPod, may not be as legal as you think. I find it fascinating what the Recording Industry Institute of America is willing to look the other way on and what they aren't when it comes to copyright. Just shows that adults and kids alike are at risk of not doing the right thing when it comes to copyright even when they are trying hard to be good. There is a parenting lesson in that.

Pop Quiz on Copyright Law Cuts Down on P2P Software Abuse

One university is resorting to an old standby - the pop quiz - to cut down student abuse of peer-to-peer networks on campus to share music and movies illegally and stop the complaints and fines of the recording and movie industries. Missouri University of Science and Technology now requires students to ace a six-question quiz on digital copyright law to get six hours of access to peer-to-peer software they can use to share music and movies online. The quiz has cut copyright complaints on campus from the recording industry to eight this academic year, down from 200 in 2006-07. Missouri S&T students who violate copyright law may lose their Internet privileges or face fines, community service, extra research assignments or suspension from classes. Violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act also can draw lawsuits by the recording industry, which often cost several thousand dollars to settle. Universities that fail to stop repeat offenders can face liability too.

Is the Concept of Copyright Changing?

Pat Moser, Sidwell Friends School, asked a group of educators, "What's a librarian to do?" and we could stretch that to add teachers and students as well. The confusion over copyright and Fair Use seems to be growing as more and more content is available digitally. Moser wants to know "if copyright laws are destined for oblivion", "if we should feel free to copy and adapt", how authors will be compensated for their work, and "what DO we tell our students about copyright?" She suggests we check out Joyce Valenza's Fair Use and Transformativeness: It May Shake Your World and Harvard's Opt Out Plan as we think about where we are heading. Renee Hobbs, Temple University says, "Copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of owners, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation." What does that mean to those in the classroom and what does that mean to those producing writing, film, photographs, and other works that may be copyright protected?

Old Movies Coming Soon To... Your Cell Phone?

Starting in May you won't have to wait until 2 am to see some favorite old movies on your television. Instead if you have signed up for Sony Pictures Television's new movie network for cell phones called "Pix " you'll be able to catch flicks like "Bugsy," "Ghostbusters," "Groundhog Day," "Karate Kid," "Memento," "Philadelphia" and "Stand By Me" on your cell phone. This service will be made available to subscribers of the AT&T Mobile TV services. The cost for the service has not yet been announced.

Its Mission IS to Help Grownups with Tech Selections

Since 1993, Children's Technology Review (formerly called Children's Software Revue) has been providing monthly reviews of tech products that are targeted to kids. For example, if you are not one who understands video games, the Review will help you decide whether a game might benefit kids at school and/or at home. In fact, this publication, which can be accessed online or in print, takes on all types of electronic media including Internet sites, computer software and DVDs, video games, and interactive toys. Subscribing means you'll get access to a database of over 8200 product reviews and each month will learn about new trends, great Internet sites, and products you might want to investigate for you classroom-or perhaps, recommend for home use. Just download a sample issue to see if the Children's Technology Review would be valuable to you. Be sure to note that the Review doesn't include any advertisements.

Legal Movie Clips on Facebook

Paramount Pictures and developer FanRocket are teaming up to bring Paramount movie clips to Facebook's  user profile pages. Using the third-party developer's VooZoo application, available now, subscribers to the social networking site will have access to clips from a gamut of films including "Forest Gump," "Mean Girls" and "Zoolander. The clips, called "Voohoos," range in length from a single line of dialog to an entire scene, according to FanRocket. Users can collect as many Voohoos as they want, with the clips displayed on their profile pages. With each Voohoo added to a profile or clip sent to a friend, VooZoo users earn V-points. The more points they have, the more films they can access. Subscribers to the service initially receive 100 V-points; they then earn more points with each added clip. Different clips are worth varying points. Sending footage to a friend will earn one point, and when that friend opens the Voohoo, that earns users another point. VooZoo users who want expanded access can purchase points via a PayPal account at 100 points per $1.The service includes a link for users to purchase complete DVDs. So if your kids have movie clips on their social networking sites there may be no need to panic about copyright anymore, but who is going to tell them they can't use clips like that in projects or other public displays without permission. As the line about copyright continues to blur, parents and kids need to stay on top of what's legal and what's not.

Trends in the Digital Music Biz

Ok - the music biz is reeling and the editors at CNET have made some predictions about how being digital is going to change the biz in the next year or so. Why should you care? Because your kids are huge consumers and you need to stay current with what's going on to help them guide them through the landmines. To summarize, the folks at CNET see: Apple giving in on music price flexibility (labels want to set their own prices..is this end of the .79 to .99 cent download?), Digital Rights Management copy-protection schemes will cease to be an issue after 2008 (but your kids still will need to be careful where they use their music), music companies will use social-networking sites to promote acts rather than marketing departments, and bands, without the backing of music labels, will join forces to distribute their music on the Web. Welcome to the new world of digital music.

Microsoft Surveys Teens on Intellectual Property

Microsoft Corp. announced recently the results of a new survey that found teenagers in grades seven to ten are less likely to illegally download content from the Internet when they know the laws for downloading and sharing content online. About half of those teens, however, said they were not familiar with these laws, and only 11 percent of them clearly understood the current rules for downloading images, literature, music, movies and software. Teens who were familiar with downloading rules credited their parents, TV or stories in magazines and newspapers, and Web sites - more so than their schools - as resources for information about illegal downloading.

Microsoft is also launching the pilot of a broad-based curriculum for middle school and high school educators titled "Intellectual Property Rights Education." The curriculum is focused on preparing students for the digital age, helping them understand, in a meaningful way, how intellectual property rights affect their lives and sparking discussion to clarify the "gray areas" in protected and shared content. To complement the curriculum and enhance the learning experience, Microsoft is also launching an interactive Web site, http://www.mybytes.com, where kids can develop their own intellectual property and assign usage rights by mixing music online to create a custom riff that they can download as a ringtone. (Kids may find it a bit lame if they are already familiar with programs like Apple's GarageBand.)

While I applaud Microsoft's efforts, there has been so much written lately about how teachers are not using digital materials in the classroom because they are anxious about copyright issues, I would urge Microsoft to also do something about educating educators!

College Students Get a Reprieve …Of Sorts

Perhaps you read in this blog sometime back that the movie studios were the biggest backers of inserting language into a higher education funding bill that would force these institutions to prevent piracy or forgo the funds. Well, it turns out that college students may not be the bad seeds that the Motion Pictures Association of America has portrayed them to be.  A study that the MPAA commissioned back in 2006 stated that the figure for the number of college students who were accused of pirating movies was 40%. Now the MPAA is saying that they made a "math error" and that number may be closer to 15%. Doesn't mean they still aren't going to go after them, but could this be another case of media exaggeration?