If the MPAA's ill-fated What's the Diff? campaign taught us anything, it's that the boardroom is not the place to be crafting hip titles. Educators and technology enthusiasts both derided the curriculum for an inaccurate and simplistic presentation of copyright law, while others found the intrusion of corporate interests into grade schools just as alarming. Whether it's Captain Copyright or What's the Diff?, entertainment industry curricula are "not just biased, but just sometimes flat-out wrong about what the law says," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
That's why a bill introduced to the California Assembly last year concerned EFF lawyers so much. State Rep. Ed Chavez introduced AB 307 just before Valentine's Day, 2005, but the bill brought no love to the EFF, where activists worried that it might open the door for industry-sponsored curricula in California classrooms. (Eight days later, Chavez introduced a bill that stated, "It is the intent of the Legislature to discourage the production of music recordings in facilities that are located outside of this state." It "died at the desk.")
California currently gives technology grants to school districts throughout the state. To get those grants, each district must develop a three to five-year technology plan and submit it to the state's Department of Education. The Chavez bill, as first introduced, would have required districts to include a section in their plan on ways to teach children about copyright and file-sharing. With each district left to develop its own system for doing this, the EFF worried that cash-strapped schools would turn to free curricula offered by various trade groups—curricula that might not give a full picture of copyright and fair use.
Since first reporting on AB 307, the bill has cleared the Senate Education Committee and now faces only a vote in the Appropriations Committee and then a full vote on the floor. Unless the committee believes the bill to be too expensive for the state to implement, it looks well on its way to becoming law in the next few months.
But this isn't the same bill we brought to your attention a few months back. Concerned about the bill after reading our coverage, the EFF approached both Rep. Chavez and a committee analyst charged with commenting on the bill's merits and potential problems. Derek Slater of the EFF tells Ars that both "were welcoming of our comments and not trying to simply come down on students." The EFF explained how the bill, as first written, focused only on telling students what not to do. But a real discussion of copyright would include much more than this. Slater worried that "simply wagging a finger at students isn't going to help matters," and both Chavez and the analyst were open to suggestions on how to improve things.
The staff comments on the bill encouraged the EFF to continue its work. In these comments, the committee analyst charged with examining the bill wrote, "How can provision of a consistent and accurate curriculum be in short?... Arguably, students and teachers should also be educated on other aspects of technology such as Internet safety, and appropriate attribution of Internet sources to avoid plagiarism."
The analyst suggested forming an advisory group to draft such a curriculum, rather than leaving it up to each district. The results would (hopefully) be more open, and the curriculum better designed and more nuanced than most industry productions. Chavez's office changed the bill's requirements to include "the concept, purpose, and significance of copyright" and also instructed schools to teach students how to "distinguish lawful from unlawful online downloading"—at least implying that there is such a thing as a legal download.
These changes did not include an explicit decree to teach "fair use," but the EFF found the new bill vastly superior to the old one. The group's main concern is getting students to "think critically about these topics," and they're hopeful that the new bill will make that easier. The RIAA, who sent a representative to the committee hearing on the bill, had no problem with the changes, either.
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