Happy New Year everyone! We hope you’ve all had a good start to 2020.
We will be kicking off the new year / new decade by giving a webinar for the Association of Learning Technology (ALT) on the 22nd January at 12.30-1.30 GMT. The topic is going to be one close to our hearts: copyright literacy, but more specifically its relationship to open practice. Further details are available on the ALT events page. The webinar is open to all but you need to register in advance.
The idea for this came about through preparing for a presentation at the SEDA Conference last November, where Chris and I both attempted to define how copyright literacy related to openness. We realised (as ever) we saw things a bit differently and in fact there was nothing previously written on this topic, although several writers in the open education world (notably Catherine Cronin) have recognised that understanding copyright is part of open practice. Anyway, to cut a long story short we thought we’d like to discuss this topic with a wider audience as we are sure there are plenty of people with ideas to contribute. And perhaps we might then start to develop our thinking a bit more, rather than just saying that these two concepts are linked.
We didn’t get around to writing our own review of happenings in the world of copyright in 2019 [you can blame an excess of copyright themed Christmas cake – Ed], but thankfully Eleonora Rosati at the IPKat has done a great job of this with their annual awards of the most important events, people, legislation etc in the world of copyright from last year. Another great round up of 2019 comes from the 1709 blog team, but we were very sad to see that this is due to be their last post. As bloggers we appreciate how much work it is to keep a blog up and running, but the 1709 blog has become such a staple of the copyright community it will be sorely missed.
Meanwhile, the 1st January, also known as Public Domain Day, celebrates the release of a whole raft of copyright works that fall into the public domain each year. Check out the Class of 2020 which includes celebrated authors, artists and other creative types who’s work have come into the public domain in different countries around the world, depending on the copyright duration for works (life plus 50 countries differ from life plus 70).
Who knows what 2020 has in store for us all, but here’s wishing you success and happiness and may copyright literacy be with you always.
Copyright Literacy 