In a recent post on the DMCA-info listserve, Jan Carmikle, the UC Davis Designated Agent for Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices, sent out a welcomed listing of both legal download sites and alternatives to legal downloading, namely streaming.
The compilation of resources provided by Educause is in response to the The Higher Education Opportunity Act which requires all colleges and universities to offer legal alternatives to unauthorized downloading.
The collection of 52 resources is available on the Educause website:
http://www.educause.edu/node/645/tid/33381?time=1256148835
Note: the site is continuously updated and today there are 51 resources on the list (11.17.2009)
Legal downloading & streaming alternatives for music, games & video
The Educause site includes a diverse assortment of legal alternatives to downloading, including streaming music, streaming video, online games, along with some legal P2P file sharing sites.
The streaming video sites include classic and contemporary award winning films such as those found at The Criterion Collection: online cinematheque, along with a lengthy listing of sites providing streaming access to popular TV and movie titles from commercial producers/vendors from Disney to Zune…
Many of these sites do have online stores for purchase of related products.
Looking for Educational Videos or Podcasts?
It takes a little wading around to find educational resources but they are there, though definitely buried. After keyword searching and scrolling through the channels, collections and ‘recently added’ lists, I came up with the following educational shows on Hulu:
Milestones in Science & Engineering: http://www.hulu.com/milestones-in-science-and-engineering
The Nobel Prize (short clips): http://www.hulu.com/the-nobel-prize
Wired Science: http://www.hulu.com/wired-science
Hulu links out to some of the commercial sites, providing short clips as is the case with the TLC Discovery Health show (short clips): Big Medicine
http://tlc.discovery.com/videos/big-medicine-obesity-in-america.html
Downloading Video and Audio Podcasts for Players or to view on your computer:
Higher Education Video and Audio Podcasts are available through iTunes (UC Davis on iTunesU) and Zune (higher education section) both requiring software downloads…but well worth it.
A favorite among the many streaming video sites is Hulu which offers an assortment of TV and video content through its channels and collections and some may be of interest to educators.
For example, in the Hulu Collections you’ll find President Obama’s speeches:
http://www.hulu.com/collections/ and related TV and video collections.
Other Hulu services include the Publishing and design tools from their Hulu Labs:
http://www.hulu.com/labs
Keep up on issues of copyright and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in action:
Subscribe to one of the UC Davis listserves: Copyright-info and DMCA-info.
Find out more about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) at the UC Davis Innovation Access: connecting research to the market.
About the image:
The original family snapshot was cropped and edited using the built-in image editor on the free Flickr site. We used the pro features in the embedded Picnik editor (additional fonts, icons, images to overlay your photos). Subscription to the pro version provides access to the stand-alone Picnik editing site and allows the users to pull images from a variety of photo sites across the web at a cost of $24.00 for the annual subscription. Even the free Flickr accounts can be linked to the free Picnik editor via the ‘edit’ button; pro Picnik subscriptions can be linked through a login when in Flickr or Picnik. Both options allow for an arsenal of online quick editing features. To access the editor, log into your free or pro Flickr account, then click the edit button directly above any of the pictures you have uploaded.
View a larger version of the Picnik embellished image using the Halloween ghosts, copyright symbol, arrows, black and white view, item focus in blue and, my favorite, the editable lightening rod.
Posted by: Bernadette Daly Swanson
Tags: copyright, DMCA, legal downloading, music, streaming video, video