photoCOPYer

My research topic is “Copyright in Classrooms” and naturally, my artifact would be: copy machines.

The moment I wrote down the phrase “copy machines”, I realized this would be a fascinating approach to my research question. The purpose of my research is to investigate into the factors that influence teachers’ understanding of copyright, and consequently, affect their behaviors of using copyrighted materials. My assumption is that teachers’ attitudes and behaviors towards copyright could change. And if my assumption is right, copy machines will indisputably play a significant role in this transitional process. I mean, think about it, there was a time when photocopy was not and could not be the choice of any teacher, simply because photocopiers were not available. What did teachers think of copying in those good old days and what would they do when they wanted to share interesting articles with their students?

Photocopiers emerged to address the existing but undiscovered needs of human beings. When Xerox developed its first photocopiers, it “expected customers would make about 2,000 copies a month, but users easily made 10,000 a month, and some as many as 100,000” (Thompson, 2015). That’s huge amount of information disseminated. Customers did not make more copies (at least not so much more) because they had photocopiers, they did it because they had always wanted to. Steve Jobs once said, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them” (Sayings of, 2016). Photocopiers are one of those things that people only realize they want the moment they see.

And artifacts like this can give us insights into people’s behavior, which is exactly what I intend to explore in my research of Copyright in Classrooms. If photocopiers were my research subject, I would dig into their history and find out why people wanted them from the very beginning. Also, there could have been many possibilities in the design and technology of photocopiers throughout its development. What were those possibilities and how did photocopiers evolve into its current status? What did this evolution suggest about people’s attitudes toward copying and how were their behaviors affected? And eventually, what influences the social group of teachers’ attitudes toward copying and how are their behaviors affected?

It makes sense. In fact, attitudes toward copying did undergo changes. For example, like their modern counterparts, publishers in the 1970s also worried that vast amount of copying would impair their sales and took their complaints to the courts. But they lost. The courts and Congress of the U.S. in the 70s tended to loosen the restriction on copyright (Thompson, 2015), which may not be the intention of legislation today. So, what happened in between?

I imagine the study of copy machines would be fun. I could compose a timeline of the history of photocopiers, which would be something like this:

I could also make a detailed table of the properties of photocopiers, which would look like this:

Name	Time	Inventor	Volume	Technology	Efficiency	Price
914	1959	Xerox	648 pounds	Dry, electrostatic image, toner	a copy/7 seconds

And the research would also be very inspiring. It will lead me into considerations that have never occurred to me before. For example, what will teachers’ attitudes and behaviors be in the future with photocopiers developing into their futuristic form of 3-D printers?

Well, that could be my next research.

Reference

Says of Chairman Jobs. (2016). All About Steve Jobs.com. Retrieved from http://allaboutstevejobs.com/sayings/stevejobsquotes.php

Thompson, C. (2015 March). How the Photocopier Changed the Way We Worked-and Played. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/duplication-nation-3D-printing-rise-180954332/?no-ist