Copyright Is Broken: COVID-19 Pandemic Revealing Just How Messed Up Our Permission-Based Culture Is | Techdirt

"Like large parts of the world right now, I'm stuck at home these days, and figuring out how to work and be a distance learning proctor to children. A week and a half into this forced educational experiment, my kid's kindergarten teacher decided to post a (private) video of her reading a children's book to the students. Why did it take so long before reading time arrived to distance learning? Copyright, of course. She needed to wait for permission from Random House, apparently, and that also meant that in posting the video to the distance learning platform the school is using, she noted in both text, and prior to reading, "with permission from Random House."

Now let's think about how silly this is. No one would ever expect that if you walked into a kindergarten classroom that a teacher would first need to (a) get permission to read aloud a book and (b) state before reading that he or she had "permission" from the copyright holder. This is permission culture gone mad. But it's the way things are, especially since copyright holders have spent the past two decades blaming platforms for hosting any "infringing" material. I doubt that the teacher in this case was directly concerned about her own liability (though, she might be), but it very likely had to do with the distance learning platform the school is using requiring her "properly license" anything uploaded. Indeed, when I tweeted about this, a copyright lawyer insisted that this was "better for everyone" to make sure that no one had liability. I question how it's better for teachers, students, or culture in general, however...."