Concerned Educators Letter to Congress. Why SOPA Could Kill the Open Education Resource Movement - Education. Thanks to the Open Education Resource movement, remixing and redistributing educational content has become standard.
Efforts like the 10-year-old OpenCourseWare project at MIT, OER libraries stocked with free or low cost electronic books for college classes in Washington and California, and the rise of online learning have all contributed to the democratization of education. But all that global knowledge sharing could come to a grinding halt if the Stop Online Piracy Act goes forward. In a "Concerned Educators Letter to Congress" a grassroots collective of OER and educational technology leaders write that SOPA would "chill the creation of educational content. " Many OER platforms are nonprofit, operating with Creative Commons licenses and allowing global users to upload content on the honor system.
How SOPA Affects Students, Educators, and Libraries. Big media groups like the MPAA and the RIAA have historically targeted college campuses with “anti-piracy” measures, and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) — the blacklist bill they’re trying to push through Congress — is no exception.
The bill’s supporters insist that it targets only “rogue” foreign sites dedicated to piracy, but its vague language and overbroad enforcement methods all but ensure it could be used to stifle student and educator speech. Open educational resources Some sites with reason to be particularly concerned are international communities dedicated to “open educational resources” (OERs), which are created to be shared, built upon, and used in education. And Not Only That, SOPA Will Ruin MITx!