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Copyright laws may encourage innovation, but they also make it difficult for students to access the materials they need. A recent Innovative article explains:

"In the past, copyright and education have evolved together in response to technological advances from the book to the videocassette, and copyright law has been designed to allow educators to use a wide range of media with their students. Stephen Marshall describes how digital communication technologies threaten these accommodations, not as a direct consequence of the technology itself or even of copyright law but rather as a result of the growing prevalence of control technologies aimed at extracting profits from every conceivable use of information. Marshall argues for a rethinking of copyright in the face of Web 2.0 technologies that do not fit into traditional conceptualizations of copyright and suggests that, if educators do not speak up, copyright law will be taken over by corporate forces interested only in profit, to the detriment of educational uses of media."

This can be a touchy subject. But, I believe it is possible to create copyright laws that benefit everyone - including the content creator, the publisher, the teacher, and the student.