Academic

The New School Year and Subconscious Copyright Infringement?

By Jacqueline Lipton

Following Al's musings on pre-Civil War curricula in honor of the new school year, I thought I'd share my own musings as my little 4 year old trudged off to pre-school for the first time this morning.

He had informed us last week that for the new school year he wanted a purple back-pack with googly eyes and straps.  So mommy and daddy dutifully stood in line at the Office Max back-to-school sale for half an hour to purchase said purple back-pack (luckily they had one in stock), then off to Michaels to purchase googly eyes (on sale for 49 cents!).  After having lovingly glued the eyes to the backpack, we realized that we had just created the lovable back-pack character from Dora the Explorer.  I don't know how we didn't notice given that our 2 year old has been watching a Dora DVD on a repetitive loop for the last month.  So did we just commit subconscious copyright infringement sending our little tyke off to school with an unauthorized facsimile of Dora's backpack??  I can suddenly understand the "unconscious copying" defense often argued by musicians in copyright infringement cases.  (And, yes, I know we're not actually making a commercial use of the thing, but I just thought it was cute that we didn't notice as we painstakingly created a direct copy of Dora's backpack.)

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on August 31, 2009 (boomark / email).