Robin Lang

SLM 521

February 28, 2005

Question

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??

Answer

In this situation it should be legal for the students to copy graphics from these websites and use them in Power Point presentations. According to the copyright quiz in techlearning.com, “the web may be mined for resources.” It’s okay to download graphics without permission from the copyright holders, as long as the images won’t be put back on the Web. If the Power Point presentations are only being shown in the classroom, then the students should be able to safely download graphics from this site, without copyright permission.

Question

Mr. Hamer is tutoring for the functional writing test out of a copyrighted series of workbooks from Houghton 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 the day's class.

Answer

For this situation, I did not feel clear about the copyright infringement implications, by viewing the recommended websites. I consulted the Houghton Mifflin website directly for more information. According to the Houghton Mifflin website, the user must request permission to copy and distribute material from the website. It states that the information on the website is copyrighted, and may be copied or downloaded for personal use, but beyond that, the user needs to request permission. Houghton Mifflin also produces a website called Education Place at www.eduplace.com. This website includes educational materials, textbooks, resource materials, and technology for teachers and students to use. The policy at Education Place states that pages may be printed and copied, as long as the web pages contain a permission line allowing the user to do so. The user also must include the copyright notice on the pages. If the page does not include the permission line, then the user needs to obtain permission for Houghton Mifflin.

I would recommend that Mr. Hamer read the Houghton Mifflin copyright rules before distributing the pages. This should apply what a teacher should do in the case of any publisher. The teacher should read the company’s copyright rules before copying and distributing any material from a website.