SOPA is not yesterday’s news, it is tomorrow’s topic. The education world reeled last month as we realized just how many of our students were using Wikipedia in their research. In protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the US Senate’s version, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), Wikipedia blacked out, Google covered its logo, and many other sites were taken down to bring attention to this legislation.

“But we can claim fair use,” say many educators. “This law wouldn’t affect education.”

Look deeper and you can see that this is wrong. It does affect you and everything you do. It gives us an insight into just the first battle we will see between lawmakers and digizens (digital citizens) about who will control this Internet.

Let’s make one thing clear, copyright infringment is wrong and is already illegal according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) (PDF).  Lawmakers are trying to get at “rogue” sites that operate in other countries where the US has no jurisdiction but are becoming overseas “safe houses” for pirated movies, films, and other content.

What are SOPA and PIPA?
If you’re well educated on this topic, skip this, but we cannot assume that everyone understands what these acts would do. I stopped every class during the week of blackouts and protests and taught how the Internet works. The Internet domain name services (.com .org, etc.) are controlled by a central agency, ICANN or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. This nonprofit agency determines what extensions can be sold and keeps the master list of all domain names.

Computers think in numbers (data) but we humans think in words (information). Every server (and computer) on the Internet has a special number called an IP address. This number is pretty long and would be impossible for most people to remember. So, instead of using numbers, we use names. ICANN has a list of the names and the numbered addresses for where each name should point. This data is housed in a database that is literally distributed throughout the world in the Domain Name System (servers are called DNS servers).

SOPA and PIPA would have effectively inserted a kill switch between the domain name and the address. So, if a copyright holder claimed that someone had infringed upon their copyright, it would have been possible to go into some sort of system and break the link between the domain name and their numbered address. This means that if YouTube.com had one pirated video and the copyright holder went into the SOPA-system (whatever that would have looked like), in theory, that one video could cause the entire YouTube domain name to lead to a page saying something like “this site has been taken down for piracy.” In practice, YouTube’s IP address would still work but who would know that (at least initially.) Additionally, there was no provision in the law for this take-down to go through a judge or any sort of arbiter.

Why do educators care?
Some of you could care less about Wikipedia going down. In fact, you might be pleased. But there are bigger implications here. Let me illustrate with a first-hand experience of trying to claim fair use.

The Digiteen project is managed by our nonprofit Flat Classroom Conference and Live Events to help us cover the ongoing costs of managing the bi-annual conference. We teach about digital citizenship and ask our students to follow copyright laws even though we could claim fair use. Three years ago we received a “take-down notice” for an innocuous photo that someone claimed was theirs that was uploaded as a profile picture on our Ning. (As discussed in chapter 5 of our new book) I responded that we were a nonprofit and these were schools and we claimed fair use.

We planned to remove it but wanted to work with the student involved and create a teachable moment for us all. However, the clock was ticking and our entire Ning was going to be removed from the system because of this photo. After some time (and lack of response from Ning when we had mentioned fair use) we became alarmed that there really was no mechanism to “claim” fair use.

Ning was a for-profit company, so did that trump our claim of fair use even though we were using their platform as a nonprofit and as schools? We never found out because we couldn’t risk losing everything for one photo. We deleted the photo. The teachable moment and claim of fair use was gone; we couldn’t risk it.

Fair use is a lovely idea, but the ability to actually claim fair use is questionable in my experience.

So, in reality, SOPA jeopardized everything for Flat Classroom projects. Our projects could come to a screeching halt when some company that didn’t understand fair use hit the trigger to knock down any of our sites. Students are going to mess up in copyright. We are teaching these things because they don’t understand them, so by definition they aren’t 100% there yet. But SOPA didn’t allow for any failure - 100% compliance, or, if we catch you, we can kill your domain name. This would result in unmanageable online projects where students are involved.

ICANN see the future
The bigger issue is what this has triggered. There is pressure from the US Commerce department on ICANN because of their desire to release new top level domains (the gTLD program) for a whopping $185,000. ICANN argues that this is to allow non-english characters in a domain (instead of .com it would be another language) but also has pointed out that companies like .disney could have their own domain.

ICANN is a nonprofit but every time they release new domains, their coffers are full. The US Federal Trade Commission says that this is not good for consumers and adds no value. 
Increasing tension between the US Commerce department (PDF) and ICANN as well as the realization that SOPA was not just a US law has countries like Russia, India, and China advocating that ICANN needs to be under United Nations (UN control), according to a recent NPR report. (This view has been refuted by others, however.)

Publishers in the US are arguing that the rights of their artists and authors aren’t being respected and that billions’ worth of intellectual property are stolen every day. They need more than a copy right, they need a copy protection and today’s internet doesn’t do either.

Enter ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, negotiated “in secret” by the US, European Community, Switzerland, and Japan, and joined by many other countries. Like SOPA, ACTA has far reaching intellectual property implications but doesn’t require congressional approval as it is a treaty. And yes, there is a Stop ACTA movement already mobilizing.

How are we, as educators, to make sense of all of this? How does it impact us? What role will intellectual property play in our ability to run public educational networks? We’re dealing with many unknowns, but let’s look at what we can do.

Education’s Role
1- Help stop demand for pirated material at the source
The greatest filter is the human brain. We are raising a generation of students who don’t respect copyright and download free music any chance they get. They’ll watch a pirated copy of Twilight on TV Shack without thinking twice, even if they have to be wary of malware pop-ups. If a person can pirate it, they will. We must show that we respect copyright. And even if, as educators, we can claim fair use, we want students to be ready for a world where they probably can’t.

2- Advocate to make “A+” quality permissible to educators
But we also need artists and musicians to allow students to contact them and claim permission for using their work in films and other creative endeavors. This is the missing link.

We need a clearinghouse to let us license and remix work from the commercial sector and none exists, because everyone says that we can claim fair use. However, the line also blurs because there are times students create something that profoundly impacts their lives and moves from education to commercial.

For example, we have a Google 20% time project in my 9th grade computer fundamentals class that we call the “Freshman Project” where students spend 20% of their time on the project of their choice. One student @Apps_for_Autism is testing and rating apps for autism and another is recording an album of his piano compositions. These projects are very good and the students may want to market them, so we are doing due diligence on copyright and performance issues.

We must educate students on copyright -- both on using the copyright of others and on creating their own copyright, creative commons or otherwise.

3- We must model best behavior in terms of our own copyright use
We also need to understand that copyright and control of the Internet is a debate that will define this generation and students need to be part of the conversation. If your school didn’t have at least one class that covered SOPA and the implications, then you not only missed a teachable moment, you did a disservice to your students.

4- Intellectual property is the commodity of the 21st century – respect it
Some publishers may read this (including my own, Pearson Publishing) and groan at what I’ve written because outright piracy hurts their bottom line. They are being portrayed as the “bad guys” because they want to protect their intellectual property and this too is wrong. Just because SOPA would have been a poor implementation doesn’t mean that it is wrong to protect intellectual property. Intellectual property rights drive education in many ways and I think that they should be protected.

When we talked about intellectual property, I asked my students --
“What if you wrote an 800-page paper, spent 2-3 years of your life making it perfect, and succeeded in turning it into a book – how would you feel if someone took that book, made a copy, and started giving it away for free?”

They said they’d be angry, that it was very hard to write a term paper, and they couldn’t think of writing more.

They are right. Artists, authors, and intellectual property owners put their lives into their work. It is OK to sell that right and ask people to pay for it just like they pay for the cereal they consume and the clothes they wear. It isn’t a bad thing and it needs to be protected. Most of us who write nowadays also work to add value and give things away for free as well and that is great too.

5- The Open Education Movement carries intellectual property questions, too
Free is not the same as Open. Open education resources are shared and accessible. That doesn’t mean you can copy these resources. There are fine lines here that all of us must understand when we use Open resources.

In Conclusion
The SOPA debate is not going away even if the legislation is lying low for a while. The fact is that the supporters say their mistake was not moving fast enough. When former senator Chris Dodd  is released to lobby Congress after his 2 year moratorium is up, this stealth bill will come back under another name. Watch and be ready with an opinion.

Also know that Intellectual Property rights are going to be a hot topic now and for the foreseeable future. This issue isn’t going away, nor is it simple. Big money is on the table and under the table (as evidenced by the luxury cars seized in the on raid of Kim Dotcom, founder of international pirating site Megaupload).

As ISTE members, it is our responsibility to educate ourselves and discuss the important intellectual property issues that will shape the world of education tomorrow. These are important issues and ISTE members are uniquely positioned in society to understand the technology and the educational impact of various decisions that governments around the world could make. We are at a unique point in history where you and your skillset can be uniquely, positively used for the good of mankind. So, educate, advocate, and speak out. These issues are important.

Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) has been an ISTE member since 2006 and blogs at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. She is coauthor of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds with ISTE Board member Julie Lindsay.  The opinions shared here are her own.