Copyright Elective

Sites on copyright:

Ten copyright permission myths

http://www.copylaw.com/new_articles/copy_myths.html

Copyright Bay – good site for educators to visit reviewing fair use guidelines.

http://www.stfrancis.edu/cid/copyrightbay/

Copyright guidelines for technology

http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml

Scenario One

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?

Under fair use guidelines this is permissible. It would be a good idea to have the students give credit to the sites from where they gathered the information. This follows the fair use guideline listed on the above copyright Bay site that says “students may incorporate others’ works into their multimedia creations and perform and display them for academic assignments.” The students would not however be permitted legally to upload these projects to the internet where all could see them

.

Scenario Two

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.

This is permissible under fair use guidelines for multiple copies. The guidelines on the copyright Bay site that pertain to this situation say:

-The copying must be done at the initiative of the teacher (at the moment of inspiration).

-The copying must be done at a time when it is unreasonable to get permission from the copyright owner.

-Only one copy is made for each student.

-No charge is made to the student except to recover only the cost of copying.

-The copying is done for only one course.

-The same item is not reproduced from term to term

Mr. Hamer would be following each of the above guidelines. He has already purchase 20 copies and the additional seven would not cause real financial hardship to Houghtin Mifflin. It probably would be a good idea to destroy these copies after the students were through studying them.