EME5050 - ABC Week 3
In legal terms, copyright is defined as a set of statutory rights granted exclusively to the author or creator of an original work. This is with the intent of helping a creator control if/when his particular intellectual property may be legally copied, adapted or distributed by others. In simple terms, most people interpret copyright as the right to copy someone else’s work. At first, copyright was used by authors to control how others were allowed to use the books that they wrote. Then during the 19th century, copyright started to apply to a wider variety of original works such as: sculptures, drawings, paintings, prints, engravings, dramatic works, musical compositions, maps and charts. Now that we have moved into the 21st century, we are seeing copyright being applied to all kinds of original digital works that range from computer games, to sound recordings, podcasts, and even motion pictures. Original choreography and architectural works are being copyrighted as well, but with all our technological advances, there is a wealth of original digital content being created and copyrighted. This is happening not only in the business and entertainment worlds, but also in today’s K-12 classrooms.
Currently in my school district we have an EETT Grant in which Discovery Education is working with some of our eighth grade science teachers and their students to use Discovery Education content to create original digital projects. The students are creating their own digital mashups in which they are combining videos and still images from the Discovery Education web site with text, music, and narration. During this process the students are not only learning how to properly cite and attribute unoriginal content they want to incorporate, but they are also learning how they can copyright their own intellectual property using a Creative Commons license. You will learn with the next slide that a Creative Commons license offers the creator of an original work more flexibility than the standard “all rights reserved” copyright license. In addition, this is also a very opportune time to teach these junior high students about plagiarism. While they are working on their projects in class, the teacher is going to ask, “How would you feel if one of your classmates copied part of your mashup without you knowing and then he turned it in for a grade?” The hope is that this type of scenario will bring about a passionate group discussion, resulting in the students being able to internalize the feeling of “being ripped off” when it comes to plagiarism.
When defining a person’s intellectual property, you are talking about a person’s creative thoughts that result in unique expressions of ideas or tangible products that have value. This means they can also be patented, trademarked or copyrighted. The reason K-12 educators should encourage students to consider using a Creative Commons license for any of their original works is because it allows them to retain copyright, while also allowing non-commercial adaptations, copying and distribution of their work. This in turn will add to the “educational lifespan” of the student work and will educationally benefit a broader spectrum of learners over time.
The reason K-12 educators should encourage students to consider using a Creative Commons license for any of their original works is because it allows them to retain copyright, while also allowing non-commercial adaptations, copying and distribution of their work. This in turn will add to the “educational lifespan” of the student’s innovative work and it will educationally benefit a broader spectrum of learners over time. Use the following link and you will be taken to the Creative Commons homepage where you can check it out for yourself. http://creativecommons.org/
The term “fair use” is not easily defined and it is an exception to the “rule of copyright.” As a matter of fact, fair use has come to apply to more than one exception and in the mid-1990s they were all compiled into a document entitled, “Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia.” Fair use allows copyrighted material to be copied without obtaining permission from the copyright holder only in which it will be strictly used for commentary, criticism, or parody. Historically, the interpretation of the term “fair use” has remained so vague that millions of dollars have been spent in judicial systems all over the world, because people keep trying to qualify a clear-cut definition. All has been for naught because the lawmakers and judges who first created the “fair use exception,” wanted it to be left open to interpretation and not limited.
As the authors Susan Ko and Steven Rossen point out in their book, “Teaching Online: A Practical Guide,” copyright laws vary greatly from country to country even though there are international regulations for copyright in place. This means that today’s K-12 digital educators should not make it a practice to freely copy and use material obtained from a website on the Internet under the guise of “fair use.” As we all should know by now, the World Wide Web is far-reaching and it contains information from locations across the planet. There are four key questions that everyone, not just K-12 digital educators should answer when determining if a copyrighted work meet the criteria of “fair use.” - The first question asks, “Is the character in which the material is going to be used for commercial or non-commercial reasons?” An educator should be using it for non-commercial purposes, so meeting the first criterion should not be difficult.
- The second question is, “What is the specific nature of the copyrighted material?” This question delves into whether the work is or is not in the public domain. If it is then it may have never been copyrighted, or its original copyright has run out. All works in the public domain may be used under “fair use,” and do not require permission from the copyright holder for use. In addition, this question considers if “by nature” the material is strictly factual, or if it is uniquely creative. Factual information is more likely to meet the criteria, but the more creative the material, the more likely that it will not.
- The next question asks, “How much of the material is going to be used?” If the answer is “almost all,” then it would not meet the criteria for “fair use.”
- The final question is, “What impact would the use of this material have on its potential market value?” If using a copyrighted work could in some way negatively impact its market value, then it would not be considered fair use. This criterion holds significant importance for K-12 digital educators such as those in my district who use “Blackboard Learn” to provide an online learning environment to support and enhance the face-to-face classes that they teach. It requires students to use a unique username and password to log on to the class, and using copyrighted material in this way should not have a negative impact on its future market value. This particular instance of using a copyrighted work without obtaining permission first does meet this criterion for fair use.
TEACH Act is short for the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act, and it became an amendment to copyright in 2002. As a result, digital creations and distance learning landed “front and center” in the debate on how copyright applies to the digital classroom. This particular subject is similar to fair use in that it complex and often left to interpretation. This is not helpful in the least to K-12 digital educators. Fortunately there are three key points on which they can rely when they want to use copyrighted text, video, or audio in their classrooms, without having to obtain permission or pay a fee to the copyright holder. The first one is to limit how much of the work they actually use. This is pretty straightforward and it follows the same guidelines of fair use. The second point is to limit the amount of time that the copyrighted material is made available. It should only be accessible for time periods in which it is relevant to a specific curriculum of study. The final point is that teachers should make sure that any copyrighted material they use should only be accessible to those students enrolled in their classes. An effective way to do this is to make the kind of content only available inside an online class that requires students to log on with their unique username and password.
Hopefully you now know more about the key points of copyright and fair use and how they apply in today’s K-12 classrooms. If you are currently a K-12 teacher, then you need to start thinking of yourself as a K-12 digital educator. You also need to start putting all the key points you learned about copyright, fair use, intellectual property and the TEACH Act into a cohesive plan of action that will help you get the most you can from all those educational resources that are just a mouse click away. As educators we now find ourselves immersed in an age that has been coined the “Digital Age,” and we owe it to our 21st century students to be 21st first century digital citizens.
References:(2007). What is Fair Use? Copyright & Fair Use: Stanford University Libraries. Retrieved January 30, 2011, from http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-ahtml
Ko, Susan, & Rossen, Steve. (2010). Teaching Online: A Practical Guide (3rd ed., pp. 227-246). New York: Routledge.
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