Free Works Education and future: Mario Pena at TEDxPlazaCibeles
[Applause] well thank you very much um yes well my name is Mario p as you all know and I've been involved in copyright issues for a few years uh right after 2003 I started to use Creative Commons licenses for my works for whatever I do and ever since then I've been involved in copyright things for one reason or the other I'm going to explain a little bit about what is the relationship and my dream and my vision of how open contents can be used in education when I'm talking about free works I'm talking about basically open works but first I want to define something that sometimes is not very clear it's what is copy left when we use copy left we think that copy somehow is the contrary to copyright and that's not the case instead is a hack of the copyright system the copyright system and the authorship laws uh is a set of rules or a law set of laws that we have that Grant exclusive exclusive rights to the creator of a work and if you are not the author of the work you have to request for permission to use that in in in your life um so by hacking the system we we create a creative common create create not me creative government create and other licenses a system in which some some rights are already granted to the user so they don't have to request for a specific permission I don't really want to bore you with what copy left exactly is with the formal discussion and I may say something that is not precisely accurate but a copy life content is that that content that you can use you can sell you can distribute you can can modify as long as whatever you made out of that content is also shared with a similar license so these kind of licenses like GPL for software specifically creative commands by sherik and free documentation license are those license that Grant uh that the work that is made out of those Works will keep the same freedoms you you still will be able to sell them to distribute to use them to modify so over and over again from one work you create others and others that have the same license those are called also viral viral licenses so not all of not all of the open contents are such such thing not all of them are copy left not all of them all of them are viral licenses because they have either more or less restrictions than the copy left license but when we talk about copy left we usually use the word for for to to explain everything on copyright on sorry on on open contents so in this presentation I might say copy left when I mean open contents but in general I want to to talk about open contents in general those who already grant you all some some kind of permission but we keep in mind that this kind of licenses they are measured by the same rule the rule of copyright the only difference is that you have to be a little bit less afraid of using it because you already have some permissions not that you don't have to have fear that you don't have to be careful with some things that you do it's only that you don't have to to to be as worried because you already have some permissions um what is the relationship between young people uh contents and future and I put in parenthesis the open uh Theory because young people don't really care that much about open or not open first I talked about fear but why did I talk about fear well what is what are the words that are related to copyright when you come to think about copyright I'm not going to make you the question but you already are thinking about what are the words that you come to that come to your mind when thinking about copyright I made this little experiment I have in my Google account an alert to get news about uh things that the news related to copyright so I started to make a kind of informal survey of seeing which were the words that appear next to the copyright term in those news and this is funny here are some examples of words that you could find close to those News lawsuit three strikes infringement illegal is this one of the most used ones disconnect users of course attorney sorry for if there are lawyers here but this is one of the words that appear says domains copyright trolls and when you click in the news you go to this Dreadful announcement and images that really scare you like you are using copyright wrong and we're going after you we're going to get after you I am not saying please don't get me wrong I am not saying that sometimes there are illegal behaviors but sometimes they are just too make any fears that there shouldn't be there so is the problem of copyright being equal fear the real issue here I think that that's not the the main issue the main issue instead is the contrast between two visions that we have right now one of the Visions is the one that you have here I believe most of you and me myself we are born in the past Century not in this one and these things look looked really familiar to us at least myself when I was a kid I had only uh one a black and white TV with two channels you had you have to go and switch with your hand you know nothing like a remote control nothing like that to read books you only had paper books there are some paper books still now to listen to music there were Vil uh discs and only later there appeared cassette maybe I look too old now but that's that's that's the way it worked you were able to takee some M from the radio so we had a sense of scarcity of scarcity of getting those contents but the real scarcity for us was different it was how am I able to be on TV how can I write a book that somebody else would would would read how can I make music and make something make people to to listen to it and why nobody copies the music and play so the scarcity is not only on the contents that you get but the way I can create those contents and show them and give them to society sell them whatever but what's up to with today kids with the kids that are born in late the late 20th century or in this Century well it's totally different this is my son they are born digital they are born with a keyboard in front of their hands and this is picture is old now he's six years old he doesn't use a keyboard anymore he uses the iPad and he uses the iPad in such way that I cannot believe he's doing it so they don't think about scarcity they have a lot of tools to create contents to share contents they're not happy if they're not able to share those contents in any of the many thousands of projects that you can find in the internet they are not happy if they don't do it and they ofly have do it for free free of charge okay not everything that goes to the internet has a real value I mean I wouldn't pay for this I think it's funny okay but then you find funny things interesting things that since you have your camera and your your phones your smartphone you take this picture that is useful for me to make this example but then you find very cool contents creative contents you find Value and these contents are free to use they are all credited but not only with the contents created open that you can use you can do many things there are contents that they're not free and people are using them to create new contents since I didn't want to ask for permission I didn't put the example I don't I'm not using a full copyright content here although I wish I could but I can't well maybe in the UN United States I can because it's fair use but not here so I didn't use it instead I'm using one that is made out of open contents this picture is taken with a model actually she was a a bartender H having in her hand another picture that another artist took before so this is a kind of a collage using different contents to create something new to create a new message so the scarcity here is not about the copy fact of contents instead is how do we create new quality stuff that we can use and what's up with education what is the relationship between what I'm talking about an education there must be some kind of relationship otherwise I wouldn't be here education is also about information it's about content that needs to be shared that needs to be reused needs also to be modified but many times in when we're in the school room when we're in the universities and I am a Dropout also from the University so um we don't have any clue of what we are doing with the copyrights we don't have we don't know anything about the copyrights because for schools there are some exceptions you can use full copyright contents because there there is an exception to use them in in school so people don't don't ask question of what can I do or what can I not do this is very dangerous because there will be there still is being a friction between the two ways of scarcity the two visions of scarcity but at the same time if we knew about copyright and what happens with it we would have to a chance to infer first person with our own content experience the success of using them in life in school so for the road of success I wanted a slide like this one instead of making it I found it in the internet with also Creative Commons license education is kind of you know formal education Theory and experience how can you experience in a better way than using your own contents whatever you create yourself or other people people's content that are is are openly shared we want at least my dream is to have a better education and a better copy copyright to learn from the past and this is something obvious we have things like public domain to learn from the present we have a lot of full copyright contents like this but they're dangerous you have to be very careful with what you're doing you can get cut if you're not careful with the contents you are dealing with but those are the bricks that will bring the future but who will make the future well it has been said before by by Richard and and and Miguel is not going any longer to be something that goes upside down it's something that will go bottom up everybody becomes a learner everybody becomes a teacher in the process but kids the kids will teach us the future because they will do the future contents that are made in inside the school room they are not going to stay in the school room they will go upside they will go they will be uploaded they will be downloaded so the barriers of the school room are broken I right now they're broken they're being used everywhere education comes from very different sources not only the the school room so we cannot rely on on full copyright to do this because full copyright is a little bit of a trap these are the protection terms of copyright that are being evolved during the years and nothing seems to to change this tendency so the the the time that you have to request for permission to do anything with the contents is being uh broaden broaden everywhere and it's going to add infinitum so whatever is created with full copyright in the school rooms when they go outside and they will go outside they will be enclosed in this formula this just important to mention we are the first Society to deny our contemporary creation we cannot use whatever is being created right now with full copyright because we have to wait until 70 years plus one after the the Creator died this is very important and this make that the skills and creativity that shows an image like this is does some does have some legal consequences not in this case I didn't make this this was just taking in in alcatra just for the fun of it but with open contents we can learn a lot more we can learn the change the whole process of creation from creating contents with new new ways of creating editing them learning how to to to fund them also learn the deadlines as Dale say so there's a very important skills that we need to learn to uh really make a reflection of our time and our culture and of course to understand the process of sharing which is not something very simple as I will explain at the end of it the process of crediting correctly the authors and most important to make to find empathy with with creators to understand how do creators uh think full copyright contents open copyright contents whatever we will see we will understand them much better and we will create a copyright that will be much different it will be related not to those nasty words that I was talking about not the attorneys of course but it would go to Innovation creation sharing and wealth in the widest term of wealth I'm not talking about money also money but wealth to enrich the society just to finished and I have little time left the inevitability of change everything or sorry nothing is going to be the same anymore if something changes the world is technology the world that we think it's very static it's not is going to change the the kids are going to make the future and the future will no longer stay for us we as teachers our world will disappear and internet is a revolution inside the revolution internet is not something real it's not something virtual it is something that is part of life because it is life every little thing that we do every little action is in the internet there is a reflection there is a interconnection between the analog and the digital world so as the whatever happens in the physical world and in digital world turns in both directions there must be a reflection of life in general in the school room as it's part of life of course so it's it's all about Reflections it's all about using the right system to do the right thing so open contents are those that will lead to to a really bright future this is what I believe those education those educated in the notion that knowledge can can be openly shared will be the ones that will create the world of the future and of course the business model and this this uh this saying the Chinese proverb tell me and I will forget show me and I I will remember involve me and I will understand is now truer than ever now we can involve people to create the contents they are studying others are studying others are learning so what better better thing than use those contents that can be openly shared well thank you very much and just just to point that I spend 30% of the presentation searching for images and I know where to look for them 20% crediting those images properly and I know what I'm doing about so I wonder why people really are it's danger it's diff difficult for them to to do so well that's all thank you very [Applause] much