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. 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??

Response:

    In this situation, there are no copyright infringements. Students are allowed to use multimedia images from copyrighted material for school projects. The students must display the copyright information for the sources that they have used, giving the web sites credit. The opening page of the power point presentation should also contain a statement that says the project contains copyrighted materials that are being used as allowed by the fair use exemption of U.S. Copyright Law. The projects can not be posted on the internet. They can be posted on a secure network for 15 days. After that, 1 copy of the project can be stored in the school media center for on site use by students.
 

Scenario 2:

Mr. Jamweimer, the parent of one of our 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 download 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.
 

Response:

    This is a clear violation of copyright law. A buyer is usually allowed to make one copy of a program for back up purposes. This back up can only be used if the original program is damaged or destroyed. The software user does not have the right to distribute copies of software to other people or schools. Other issues are present in this scenario as well. Software comes with a licensed user agreement. Mr. Jamweimer bought the software and probably received a single user license. If the copy sent to the school was put on several school computers, or worse, the school network, this is a very serious copyright violation which can lead to some  hefty fines.