As an academic media librarian, one area of communication that is problematic is how to digitally deliver media to our learning communities from the confines of our purchased DVD, VHS and audio book collections; rich media that is often desired not just in their entirety but also in creative or selective bits and pieces. In short, the challenges of media and U.S. copyright law.
I think the main challenge is managing vendor digital rights. The Teach Act and Fair Use facilitates some of the educational challenges concerning media and digital delivery, but not, for example, the essential act of creating the digital copy, the .wmv or .mov file that is necessary for content streaming or download, despite robust DRM encoding (digital rights management) which attempts to protect the hard earned work of artist and distributors.
Electronic communication is not only about the dialectical exchange of our personal day-to-day and intellectual writings and media, but I hope also about communicating commercially available media. I'm by no means an expert in this area, but I would be interested in hearing more about the challenges that other institutions are facing in this area of electronic communication.
As an academic media
As an academic media librarian, one area of communication that is problematic is how to digitally deliver media to our learning communities from the confines of our purchased DVD, VHS and audio book collections; rich media that is often desired not just in their entirety but also in creative or selective bits and pieces. In short, the challenges of media and U.S. copyright law.
I think the main challenge is managing vendor digital rights. The Teach Act and Fair Use facilitates some of the educational challenges concerning media and digital delivery, but not, for example, the essential act of creating the digital copy, the .wmv or .mov file that is necessary for content streaming or download, despite robust DRM encoding (digital rights management) which attempts to protect the hard earned work of artist and distributors.
Electronic communication is not only about the dialectical exchange of our personal day-to-day and intellectual writings and media, but I hope also about communicating commercially available media. I'm by no means an expert in this area, but I would be interested in hearing more about the challenges that other institutions are facing in this area of electronic communication.