"Nice one ... Geezer!" - Pulp
The promise: http://www.deezer.com/ is a *legal* site that enables you to listen to free music on demand. In theory it should enable users embed tunes on web pages. If this worked then it would be a *great* teaching and learning tool. For example, my partner recently wanted to play her students "Joe Hill" by Joan Baez as part of a lecture on the history of American unions. Theoretically she could then embed the song on the course web page so that the students could listen to it at their convenience. Students could also embed songs for in presentations and personal / shared learning environments. Yes, I know you can do this from You Tube but … see below.
In practice: Deezer generates code that you can insert onto a web site or blog. I tried (see the embedded player below) and cannot get it to work yet but I am going to investigate further as this is such a great idea. I will edit this post if I can work our what went wrong.
Reflection: Of course you can do this with You Tube but I remain skeptical about the morality of You Tube and I think we have to set a digital rights management example to our students. This is a very grey area. I would claim that the quotes and pictures used on this site are examples of ‘fair use’. But I am not a lawyer. However, I was recently struck by something one of David Mamet’s characters said on ‘The Unit’ to advise someone with a moral dilemma: “If you knew the answer, then what would it be?”. My answer is that You Tube is built on shakey ground, I realize that the law and the younger generation think otherwise.
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