Joanna Smith

SLM 521

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. 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:

The central issue concerning a teacher allowing student to copy and paste graphics, songs, images, and text from various sources into a multimedia presentation such as Power Point revolves around what is fair use and what is not. According to St. Francis’ website, one side of the debate questions if the use of this kind of material violates a copyright holder’s right to produce offshoots of the existing material. The other side of the debate claims that the teacher is only using a small amount of material for a non-profit teaching assignment. That is why the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia was created. While not laws, these guidelines allow teachers and student to use small amounts of another’s works for educational purposes, provided that only the teacher and his or her students will be accessing the material. However, guidelines state that students may only use a limited amount of images (5 from one author; 10% from one collection), a short clip of music (10% or 30 seconds), and limited text (which ranges for poetry or literature). Once the assignments are completed, they may only be used or distributed for the next two years. After that, permission must be granted for its use. So, yes, a teacher may allow his or her students to use this type of material for a multimedia assignment provided everyone follows the guidelines.

Question: 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:

Although Mr. Jamweimer has the best of intentions, he may be wrong to distribute this software program. Currently, fair use and copyright policies claim that computer software can and should be used only by the person or organization who "purchased" them. (I say "purchased" because the user does not actually purchase any software, he simply licenses its use.) For example, a teacher who gets a new textbook that can by accompanied (for an additional fee) a test generator CD, cannot download that CD onto other teacher’s computers. Each teacher must have purchased his or her own CD. However, the bottom line does not lie within fair use or copyright policies, it lies within the licensing agreement between the purchaser and the distributor. Most of these licensing agreements allow a software user to copy and distribute small amounts of material, but only to explain a programming principal. Mr. Jamweimer may have thought he was a rocket scientist, but was really infringing on other’s rights!