[1]
Remember when I posted about the Copyright Slider: Quick Easy Access to Copyright Laws and Guidelines [2]? This was my last line in that post:
My next question is how hard would it be to make a slick flash version of this that could live online and be updated as copyright rules change?
Well, thanks to Digitization 101’s A digital version of the Copyright Slider [3] post I discovered that exactly what I wished for now exists. Go take the Digital Copyright Slider [1] for a spin.
The interface is clear and simple – they did a great job of taking advantage of the interactive medium to do things they couldn’t do on the paper slider. If it won’t disturb your neighbors, turn up the volume to hear the satisfying click each time you move the slider to a new scenario. Make sure you click on some of the *s to see more detailed information. Take note of the advice regarding more complicated scenarios as well as the links directly to documents detailing specific copyright laws.
I love that it has been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike [4] license. The creators have included their contact information along with the idea that other institutions could host custom copies of the slider with their own copyright research contacts. The only downside I see to this is that if there are changes to US copyright law, it will take time for updates to a central copy of the slider to propagate to local customized copies.
The final question is how fast they can update the slider in the event of changes to copyright law – but we will have to wait on changes to the US copyright landscape before we can find that out!
Image Credit: Image above is taken directly from a screen shot of the Digital Copyright Slider [1].