Web 2.0 technologies offer the potential to significantly improve the quality of education. However, the impact of copyright and control technologies may limit educators and students from continuing to freely interact with a variety of information sources.
This poses a great challenge for institutions to understand such participation within the limits of intellectual property law, which itself is also challenged by the movement towards collective creation. A single work of art may contain multiple copyrighted works owned by different people. This is the harsh reality of the law that many educational materials are at risk of inadvertent copyright infringement.
The law may be harsh, but it is still the law. As long as it is not declared unconstitutional, it deserves to be respected and obeyed, no matter how unfair said law may be. When the courts declare that a law is incompatible with the Constitution, the first will be null and the second will prevail.
The laws are only repealed by the later ones, and their violation or breach will not be excused by disuse or use or practice to the contrary. No judge or court will refuse to pass judgment on the grounds of silence, obscurity or insufficiency of the laws. In case of doubt in the interpretation or application of the laws, it is presumed that the legislative body intended that law and justice prevail.
The term “law” in its broadest sense means any rule of action, norm or conduct, or expression of uniformity. In its broadest sense, the law is applicable indistinctly to all objects of creation, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational, as well as intangible processes.
The law is the factor that holds organized society together. Where such an element does not exist, there is only a lawless group. To the extent that a group of men is held together as a society by such a factor, to that extent it has a legal system, rudimentary or highly developed, as the case may be.
The particular statutes, customs or judicial decisions that prevail are only some facets of that primordial and super-eminent factor. When a certain rule or act promotes the effectiveness of this factor, it is a lawful act or a good rule; if you deviate from the effectiveness of this item, it is an illegal act that must be changed.
The burden of proof of the unconstitutionality of a law falls on the individual plaintiff or challenger due to the presumption of constitutionality of a law. Laws are meant to be followed; otherwise there will be chaos, disorder. The law is like a nuclear force that holds the atom together, without it there will be destruction.
