Do you think that the basics of copyright law should be taught in schools? Why and why not?

DandomRude@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 22 points –
15

No. There are many, many things that should be taught instead, but there's apparently no time/place for them.

And, copyright laws change. Chances are that the ones who enter school, and those who leave it are going to know different directives.

Surely there are more important things to teach kids than something that mostly serves the interests of large corporations

No small creators would exist without copyright. It doesn't just serve large corporations. Tom Scott has an in-depth video on copyright as it relates to small Internet creators.

Knowing copyright laws can help you as an engineer, an artist and many other situations. Knowing this will equip you agains corporations.

I agree, of course, that many large corporations profit obscenely from copyright. But copyrights are also the livelihood of many small time players: from social media content creators, to artists and writers, to software developers and scientists.

Mandatory no. As an elective sure.

The problem with teaching law in the western world is despite what the law says a precident in a court case will function as a laws interpretation until the case is overturned or the law is updated.

I was thinking more in terms of absolute basics that can be applied in the context of everyday media use, for example. I simply think that this field is no longer just relevant for publishers and lawyers, but for everyone. After all, almost everyone is now a publisher in some way: social media and its influencers have spawned an entire industry of semi-professional publishers, content management systems and page builders make it possible for anyone to run their own website, and so on.

Maybe if the question was: Should children be taught Publishing 101, I could answer yes, publishing media is very accessible and ubiquitous now a days, as you mentioned. Then one of the subjects could be local and international copyright law.

Locally I think about 50% of teens enjoy social media training, so they at least won't dox themselves etc.

If the students can identify plagiarism then that is sufficient unless they want to get in to media later in life. Copyright law should probably be an introductory college course for people getting into media though, sure.

No, it's not important enough for the average person. It makes more sense as an elective maybe, or to wait until College/Uni when it becomes relevant.

Teaching them about privacy and security in our modern world would be far more useful.

You'd be hard-pressed in America to find a school that doesn't address that.

Good to know. I wasn't aware that this is already a thing in american schools. I just had seen earlier that lemmy.world blocked the biggest piracy community and got the impression from many comments that apparently not too many users are aware that the operators of lemmy.world might be held at least partly responsible for what content is made available on their platform.

I'd rather students have more time off for lunch instead of learning why mickey mouse shouldn't be in public domain because of the evils of public domain or some dumb shit like that, defending multi billion dollar corporations. These shill posts are very cringe. Fuck copyright.

1 more...