Lori Van Order

SLM521

Summer 2003

Ø Mr. Hamer is tutoring for the functional writing test out of a copyrighted series of work books from Houghtin Mifflin. He has 27 students but only 20 books were purchased for his class. The same material is available at the HM web page. He prints enough pages for his kids each morning for today's class.

I believe that this would be legal, according to fair use policy for teachers. I read in the copyright laws that it is legal for copyrighted materials to be copied and used in class, for face to face instruction. The students would not be able to take the material home or pass it on to anyone else, but they would be legal to be used in class for that day’s lesson. Also, according to Carol Simpson, because the work he is printing is a published work, that makes it more acceptable as well. Carol also provides insight that only the material that is necessary for the instruction should be copied, and Mr. Hamer prints only what is necessary for his class that day.

Ø 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.

After reading over the Fair Use Guidelines for Multimedia Projects, I decided that this would be half legal, but half illegal. First of all, it would be fine for Mrs. Urdvardy to download MP3 files from the web, because MP3.com pays for its archives, so the material there is legitimately acquired. It is also legal because Mrs. Urdvardy is using these materials for educational purposes. However, when she has the students copy the files and take them home, I think that would infringe on copyright laws, because according to the current law, no teacher can redistribute materials from the web—they can use the materials, but they can’t spread them around.