Matthew J. Yates

November 17, 2003

SLM:521-MC

McDaniel College

Instructor: Charles Phillips

COPYRIGHT ACTIVITY

• A teacher in your school (who has a really rowdy bunch of monsters) makes an agreement with them that they learn how to make power point presentations on sports, war, hunting, rock music and such. She lets them get graphics from anywhere on the Internet. Sites such as Sports Illustrated, ESPN. DOD, Rock Music Hall of Fame. They make great presentations and become great kids. What are the copyright implications??

While I feel sympathy for this teacher that “has a really rowdy bunch of monsters”, I think that he/she better figure out another way to get them motivated to become great kids. There are many copyright laws that are being broken if the students are allowed to proceed with this assignment. Copying and pasting graphics without permission from commercial websites and into their power point presentations is illegal. Even though this assignment is for nonprofit educational purposes, it is still wrong to use the graphics without the website’s permission. Taking these pictures, designing and/or editing them requires someone’s time and energy and they should receive the royalties if someone else uses them for their own purposes. Allowing the students to take these graphics at will is basically allowing them to take money from all the people that work hard to create that website.

• Mrs. Urdvardy, a music teacher, downloads MP3 files from the Web and uses them to instruct her students in the various kinds of music. She allows students to copy the files and take them home, listen to them and complete a worksheet.

This is the most talked-about issue right now in the world of internet copyright laws. In addition to millions of internet users downloading music without paying for it, high-speed broadband connections (i.e. DSL, cable, and T-1 lines) have allowed the downloading of movies. Both types of downloading are costing the music and movie industries millions of dollars in lost revenues. The teacher that downloads this music is not above any of the copyright laws just because it’s for educational purposes. Unless she downloads this music from a legitimate website and pays for the downloaded MP3, she is breaking copyright law. From there, she will have to read about the website’s policies on how many times she can copy the file onto CD’s for her students. Some sites might allow to copy it over and over again once you “own” the file, but she definitely needs to check before distributing it to her students.