Copyright? kid’s play

Scratch is a programming language designed for children to learn and learn with. Coming from the long tradition of constructionism, dating back to the 60’s with the early versions of LOGO. It is one of the most successful and interesing in its family. A significant factor in its success is the scratch community site.

The FAQ makes an effort to encourege sharing and reuse, while respecting copyright laws, without actually using the big C word.

Modifying and extending other people’s projects is a great way to learn more about Scratch — and to develop more sophisticated projects than you could on your own.

While we encourage remixing of projects on the Scratch website, not everyone on the internet wants their artwork to be reused. It’s important to respect the original artist’s wishes. You can search for content that is licensed for remixing at the Creative Commons website. Whenever you use someone else’s work, be sure to give them credit and put a link to the original in your project notes.

Of course, the site has a copyright policy, with perfect legalese, all backsides covered. But we don’t want to confuse kids with this digital identity and intellectual property rights stuff, do we? We just want them to have fun, and learn. Well, guess what they’re learning, and it ain’t always fun.

Credit to Masked, again. Click ‘ ? ‘ before you start.

Dont use the background, I downloaded it from a FEE website which im a member of.

This is Carrmx’s song, dont use it unless she lets you.

Click thingys :3

IM NOT COPYING MASKED IM JUST SHOWING YOU HOW MUCH I LOOK LIKE HER T.T

I was BORN with a Alice Curren hair.

Sorry for the stinky drawing I dont use my tablet its broken o.o

wow 3rd Top Viewed in 2 days! ive been on scratch for only 3 days! thank you scratchers please dont knock me off lol

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Gabbylence shared it 2 days, 12 hours ago

Based on MaskedStar‘s project

But look at the comments (hundreds, in just two days):

Dis is messed up…im speechless bout dis whole thing……i feel so bad for masked…..dis is just…ugh!

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Your just impersonating a scratcher just to be a celebrity! that is the dumbest idea Ive ever heard of!!! I can’t believe a hallow head like you could do some thing so desperate! And no one can have that color of hair! otherwise it’s a pathetic wig! And your saying that you look EXACTLY like masked star. No way. wallow in your pitiful guilt! but if you stop what your doing I’ll willingly take back all I have said. Deal?

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(you know, it was really cool at first.people can be the same, anyone can have the same interests and dislike, there’s even a lot of people with alice cullen’s hair. but the problem is, you practically stolen masked’s idenity from her. T-T and i’m not sure if you know what crohns is, but it’s MORE than just stressing and going to the hospital. it just doesn’t ‘increase’ or ‘decrease’ either. it’s always good to be your own person instead of a carbon copy, no one likes that and you arent unique.)

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I felt sorry for you when people blamed you… I trusted you, but you ACTUALLY STOLE Maskeds identity! THATS NOT OKAY. you must fix this now!! You just got Gabby sent to the hospital to get asurgery! Shes so upset shes vomitted BLOOD and you dont even care… I think it is best if you quit… NOW. I really tried hard not to be mean, but you’ve gone too far this time.

And Gabbylence fights back:

i copyrigthed it in Turkey,where i live. My uncle is a computer programmer also a designer so he dhowedme how to copyrigth it, now my character is legal at Turkey. i just saw it at that website! umh i dont remember its name, but website is Turkish anyways…

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oh yea, ask Masked! i was wondering, why would Masked add me as a friend, or reply nice to me when i comment even thougth i tell about our look-alike; GENIUS?

Of course, I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong in this debate. I don’t have the full details or the time to investigate them, but more importantly: I don’t have the legal tools: does this qualify as fair use? Is it covered by Scratch’s default creative commons licence? If Gabbylence did really copyright her charecter, does that copyright hold? And where?

The main issue for me is how easily this community, which was supposed to be all fluffy and naive, slips into copyright issues which are far from trivial, and how much they matter for the community members.

Want to get kids to understand copyright? Identity theft? Simple. Give them a site where they can share stuff, and talk about it.

And if you’re building a community content site, make sure it has the mechanisms to deal with rights and attribution.

Mitch Resnick @LKL, Wed. 14th Jan, 5pm

Mitch Resnick from the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Laboratory will be speaking at the Knowledge Lab on Wednesday. Mitch is, among other things, the man behind lego mindstorms, starlogo, and scratch. He’s also the man responsible for me being where I am now, but that’s a long story.