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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. She recommends 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??
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This is an interesting scenario. The issue of
copyright infringement is determined by a couple of factors.
First, there is the issue of getting graphics from 'anywhere on the
Internet.' Is this legal? In short, yes.
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Students may incorporate others' works into their
multimedia creations and perform and display them for academic
assignments. (http://www.stfrancis.edu/cid/copyrightbay/mm7.htm)
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I am assuming that "works" is referring to the graphics
from the websites. Now, the students must have done a couple of
things on their Power Point presentations in order to not violate
copyright laws. First, they must write 'a notice that certain
materials are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S.
Copyright Law and have been prepared according to the multimedia fair
use guidelines and are restricted from further use.' Second, they
must 'credit the sources, display the copyright notice, and provide
copyright ownership information. (The credit identifies the source of
the work, including the author, title, publisher, and place and date of
publication. The copyright ownership information includes the copyright
notice, year of first publication, and name of the copyright holder.)'
(http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml)
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But there is a more salient issue at hand. This is the issue of the Power Point presentation.
The rules above state that students may copy graphics for an 'academic
assignment.' What class does this teacher teach? Does she
teach computers? Is the power point an "academic assignment" of
simply just a way to keep the monsters busy? These are questions
that need to be answered. If there is an academic justification
for having the kids construct the Power Point presentation, then, yes,
this scenario passes muster. But, there will be questions if the
project has no academic justification. (And, by academic
justification, I am referring to completion of a course learning
outcome/ indicator.) |
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I would also like to congratulate the teacher on
inspiring the kids to 'become great!' |
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Mr. Hamer is tutoring for the
functional writing test out of a copyrighted series of workbooks 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. She prints
enough pages for her kids each morning for the day's class
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While there is some question about the gender of Teacher
Hamer, we must not hold that against him/ her. (I will refer to
Teacher Hamer as a Mr. from now on.)
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There are many issues to be addressed here.
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First is the issue of tutoring. Tutoring is no
different than teaching. So, because Mr. Hamer is tutoring in
and not 'teaching' a class, this should not affect copyright issues.
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Second is the issue of using a copyrighted book.
He is not copying from that book and giving those copies to his
students. That would be a clear copyright infringement. So, it
is good that he is getting the worksheets from the web page, but
that presents us with the third issue. |
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Is printing the material from the web legal?
The Internet is not public domain. "As a general rule, a good
way to determine whether a multimedia resource is copyright
protected or in the public domain is to relate it as closely as
possible to a print resource." (http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280c.shtml)
If the print resource is copyright protected, then the web page is
copyright protected. Thus, the workbooks are copyrighted, so
it is not legal for Mr. Hamer to copy them, or download them.
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It does not matter that Mr. Hamer is downloading
them each day. |
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