SOPA, Wikipedia, copyright, etc. 

Wikipedia (among other sites) has shut down all its English language sites for 24 hours on 18 January to protest the planned US law, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). While most people in the tech world agree that piracy of movies and music and such is not a good thing, the provisions of the bill can have horrible unintended consequences and could shut down a lot of information available online.

As part of our Digital Citizenship curriculum, and in all our computer classes and research projects, we stress with our students the need to respect other people's creations online and not to use, copy, download or share works that they have no rights to. The digital age is transforming the notion of intellectual property rights – in particular, the idea of “commons” is gaining traction (check out www.creativecommons.org) – but we still emphasize with our students the need to Take Care of Others by respecting their rights of ownership to their work.

John Iglar's Blog:Essays about technology and learning