Carrie Derr
November 7, 2003
SLM 521
Scenario #1:
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.
According
to the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, educators have
permission to use copyrighted information in the projects they create for
instructional use. Mrs. Urdvardy would
be able to create a presentation for her students involving music found on the
internet. It would be permissible for
her to download music files, with a few conditions. First, the music selected would need to be a small portion of the
larger work. In other words, Mrs.
Urdvardy would only be permitted to use 30 seconds or 10% (whichever is less)
of the complete piece. Also, the
students would not be able to copy their own files to take home and complete a
worksheet. Only 2 copies of a project
may be made and students are strictly forbidden to make their own copies. And finally, Mrs. Urdvardy would need to
provide documentation of the sources and cite the copyright notice and
ownership information somewhere on the project. She would also need to state on the first page that the
information contained in the project is protected under the Fair Use Guidelines
for Educational Multimedia.
Scenario #2
Mr. Hamer is tutoring for the functional writing test out of a copyrighted series of workbooks from Houghton Mifflin. He has 27 students but only 20 books were purchased for his class. The same material is available at the HM web page. She prints enough pages for her kids each morning for today’s class.
The
same guidelines apply for making copies of information from both the internet
and from print text. Mr. Hamer is out
of compliance with the Fair Use Guidelines in this instance. First of all, it is permissible to make
copies of certain items, but only when such copying is not planned ahead, as
Mr. Hamer is doing with his students.
In other words, the copying needs to be done as a result of
inspiration. Mr. Hamer is planning to
copy text each day for 7 of his students.
Also, in accordance with the guidelines, for longer works, there is a
limit of 1,000 words, or 10% of the work (whichever is less) that is
permissible to print. Items such as
workbooks and standardized tests are not to be copied. In summary, Mr. Hamer needs to contact
Houghton Mifflin and order another 7 workbooks for his students to use.
Sites I used for information:
http://www.stfrancis.edu/cid/copyrightbay/mc1.htm
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml