Jennifer Postal
October 17, 2004
Copyrights are privileges held by someone who creates an idea, method or other form of creative work, in that they can claim ownership of such material. This prohibits others from "borrowing" or "stealing" such works with out permission or ‘just compensation’. In this assignment I will describe whether activities in the following scenarios are allowed under current copyright laws.
Scenario 1
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,
Response
On first thought, the above scenario does not violate copyright laws since students were using images for “educational uses in the course for which they were created.” However, the teacher did not give explicit instructions to students since they did not give credit citing where they obtained any images they used. As a direct result, some copyright laws may have been violated. It is important to remember to properly cite any items used. When any doubt lingers on whether a work is copyrighted, it is behooving to ask permission about usage than claim ignorance after.
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.
Response
Under the Copyright Act of 1976, educators are allowed to copy:
- a single chapter from a book
- Excerpts from a work that combine language and illustration, such as a children's book, not exceeding two pages or ten percent of the work, whichever is less
- a poem of 250 words or less or up to 250 words of a longer poem
- an article, short story, or essay of 2,500 words or less, or excerpts of up to 1,000 words or 10 percent of a longer work, whichever is less; or
- a single chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper.
As a result, the teacher depicted above is within boundaries of copyright law since the copies are not a substitute for purchasing the book. Hopefully, this teacher will not copy the same thing for more than one semester, class or course. If this happens then the teacher would be in violation of copyright laws.