K. Hannegrefs
SLM 521 – Spring 2005
Copyright Assignment
Scenario #1
- Mr. Jamweimer, the parent of one of your most
intellectual students, has paid to download a wonderful computer software
program for his little Einstein. Mr. Jamweimer wants "our school"
to be the best and sends a copy of the downloaded file to be used by the
students on the computers at school. P.S. all of the kids use it and win
Nobel prizes in science, literature, physics, chemistry, and playground.
Mr. Jamweimer sounds like a
very generous parent. Unfortunately, his
generosity can and will get himself and the school in trouble. The computer software program he purchased
was for his home computer not to be downloaded/copied and given to a
school. If using the Fair Use Guidelines
for Multimedia Projects as a guide; he is in violation of fair use. Most software programs are governed by
licensing agreements. Most of the
licensing agreements do not allow used to copy and distribute their
information. Mr. Jamweimer would have
been better off telling the school about the software. The school could then decide if they wanted
to buy a site license for their own use.
Which would be the best case scenario for the school; what school
doesn’t want future Noble Peace Prize winners?
Scenario #2
- 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.
Mr. Hamer is infringing upon the fair use
policy of copyright law. Although the
1976 Copyright Act allows teachers to make single copies from a book or
magazine article; he is still in violation. If Mr. Hamer is following the fair use
guidelines he could make one copy for each student if the workbook pages were
used only in one term. Where Mr. Hamer
gets himself into trouble is: he is copying “consumable work” (a workbook) and
he has been printing the additional pages each morning for the extra
students. The initial copying would have
been allowed by the fair use guidelines because asking for permission at a
moment of inspiration would have been unreasonable. But each subsequence
copying was in violation of the fair use guidelines. Mr. Hamer should ask his school to purchase
the extra seven workbooks needed for his class.
Information was gathered from the following
sites:
http://www.stfrancis.edu/cid/copyrightbay/
http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280d.shtml