The teacher who has the rowdy bunch of students downloading images from other sources for their powerpoint projects are breaking the copyright laws.  The students don't have permission from the original domain to use the images for their projects.  Just because it's considered in public domain does not mean it's up for anyone to take and copy.  Granted, no one from ESPN would make a visit to this school to see the students projects, but what they are still doing is wrong.  The reason why we should educate our students about this scenerio is to make sure they don't use this in the future.  They may have to present a large project for their corporation and remember back when they used this method in class and think it's ok because no one explained what they did was copyright infringement, not asking for permission of the use of material, images, or ideas.  The one thing that is important for me to learn from this it to make sure we do go over the rules and regulations with classes before attempting powerpoint because I have my students do this process as well.

    As for Mr. Jamweimer, he had good intensions but they could get him into trouble.  If he didn't get permission to copy the downloaded material then he runs the chance of getting into trouble for copyright laws.  The students who had their worked published could get into trouble because someone can accuse them of using someone elses ideas since they didn't recieve permission to use the material on the copied software.  Students used and adaptted the software to their own ideas.  Even though they modifited the material into their own ideas they are still violating the orginal owners copyright laws.  It's just like a movie from blockbuster.  We're not allowed to make copies and distribute them to anyone we want to.  It's against the copyright laws they they provided in the beginning of every tape.  The same thing applies for downloaded software, you still have to get permission from the orginal ower or creator.