Paula Sandridge
LS-521 MC SP02
1/13/02
Copyright Activity
The first scenario I chose deals with the teacher whose students copy graphics from anywhere on the web to include in their PowerPoint presentations. I am embarrassed to say that I have been guilty of this practice myself, and after reading the articles on copyright law and fair use, I am now better informed and will follow the guidelines more carefully. The articles point out that most everything on the Internet has copyright protection, but when graphics are used in a student created multimedia presentation, which is part of their course requirement, the fair use doctrine applies and the student may include copyrighted material in the presentation. The student must, however, give credit to the source of the materials, display the copyright ownership information, and display the copyright notice within the presentation. In addition, the student must include a statement on the opening screen of the presentation that he/she is using copyrighted materials under the fair use exemption of the US Copyright Law. Another restriction to bear in mind is that students may not make more than two copies of the presentation, and one of those copies must be stored in the school’s Media Center, and the other may go to the student. I myself had planned on creating a CD of fourth grade PowerPoint projects on the European Explorers, but now I will give each child their own presentation on a floppy disk. I know that most teachers are not aware of the copyright rules when it comes to using graphics from the Internet, I will make them aware of those rules in the course of my job.
Next, I chose the scenario whereby the teacher copies workbooks from Houghton Mifflin because my husband is an educational sales representative for Houghton Mifflin and often sees this type of copyright violation. The teacher is in violation of copyright law because by duplicating workbooks, he is creating a loss of profit to the publisher and to the sales rep! Sales reps rely on sales commissions for part of their salary, so to copy workbooks deny the publisher and the sales rep their fair profit for that item. Also, copyright law says that no more than 10% of an entire unit of work can be duplicated, and copying an entire booklet, even over a school year, is certainly more than 10%. This rule would also apply to the online workbook. While it may be available in its entirety online, only 10% of the whole can be considered fair use.
Mrs. Urdvardy, the music teacher, may also be in violation of copyright law. If downloading entire mp3 files, she is in violation of the law. The copyright law says she may copy up to 30 seconds, or 10%, whichever is less, of music and lyrics from a single source to use for instructional purposes. As the paragraph above states, the teacher must also credit the source, include the copyright notice and provide copyright ownership information within the multimedia medium. This teacher also allowed her students to make copies of the files to take them home, and this also is in violation of copyright law. The law says that students may not make their own copies of instructional projects. There is one hope for Mrs. Urdvardy …. If she teaches K-6 students, she may be exempt from the 10% rule and be allowed to use more of a piece of work in her presentations.