 Hi, I'm Kathy Stone, Director of Curriculum and Instructional Design at SUNY Empire State College. Hi, and I'm Michelle Fort, Assistant Professor in Human Services, and I'm also at SUNY Empire State College. This module explores intellectual property, will challenge you to look critically at what you understand about intellectual property, and then also the basics of copyright and open access. But why is this all important? In the digitally connected world, copyright is an old concept with new implications. Information is widely accessed and moved around. How do we know when we infringe upon the rights of others? Copyright needs to be understood through the lens of the digital world, where one click can imply a viral video viewed by millions within an hour, but negatively impact or infringe upon the creator of said video. Right, so having an understanding of, for example, Creative Commons licensing helps us to better understand the circumstances in which we do and do not violate the rights of the creator. Creative Commons licensing allows the creator to give permission ahead of time to allow others to use their work, and also gives a framework within which creators can identify when, how, and under what circumstances, information is shared. For most of us, this is relevant when we share or post via social media. It impacts people wanting to create or share in today's digital world. By implication, meta-literacy lies at the heart of this concept. To become a creator, a share, or a user, a collaborator, and a teacher, we need to identify and understand the specific circumstances under which these activities can and cannot be done. As we explore the related concept of open access, please bear in mind that it is a philosophy as much as it is a designation. Access to information or to formal education has historically been locked, and here we can imagine many scenarios. So for example, we might be talking about the ways in which academic journals are associated with a given library collection, and then that library collection is in turn associated with a given institution. The institution itself might at first glance appear neutral, unless it is cost-prohibited to attend, or has a history of not including certain groups. In this way then, the information stored in these institutions is actually locked down and not broadly accessible. Right, so open access is an often used and often misused phrase. It's important to understand the difference between free and open. Again, whether we're discussing access to information or access to other resources, the differences are important and have implications for power, control, and exposure. And both of these concepts of copyright and open access relate to intellectual property. That is that the creator owns the materials she or he creates. This point has accelerated urgency from downloading but not paying for music to free pirated copies of films to unattributed use of work. So we all need to understand that while creativity might be boundless, the actual creation itself does have boundaries. It was created and is therefore protected intellectual property. What to do with these protections need lie with the creator and not with the user or consumer. As you move through this module, please keep these ideas in mind.