Copy Wrongs: Teachers Looking Online for Material, Be Warned
Know what you can -- and can't -- download for the classroom.
by Star Lawrence
Credit: Getty Images
As tech-savvy teachers integrate more multimedia work into their classroom, they also face a thorny question: Who owns the visual, audio, and moving images they download and pop into their presentations? Get that answer wrong, and you may get dinged with a hefty fine.
"I don't think most teachers willingly ignore copyright issues," says David Ensign, a professor of law at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. "But I do think many have the impression that any use of material in education is fair use."
Fair use is a component of U.S. copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without obtaining written permission, purchasing the work, or paying the creator a royalty. Typically, fair use provides for the legal, nonlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work, and applies when they are used for such applications as scholarship or review.
It's a concept with increasing importance in the modern classroom. Students weaned on tech are demanding more in terms of riveting class material. Consequently, teachers are scouring online sources looking for video, audio, snips, clips, and Web sites they can add to their presentation -- anything to capture and hold their students' attention.
Seems simple, but there's a catch. "Fair use in the educational setting is defined more broadly but does not encompass all uses," warns Ensign.
Fair use in the classroom is often dependent on the subject matter of the content. Ensign says a teacher may not be allowed to show the film The Lion King to the class simply because it was raining and the kids were squirrelly. It could be shown only if the class were doing a study of Disney films or were engaged in the study of a related subject.
Ensign recommends that every school and school district create and enforce a copyright usage policy that is very clear about what is allowable for classroom use. One easy out: linking. Ensign says he doesn't paste copyrighted material into his lessons and course plans -- he links to it. Commenting on a quoted passage is also fair use, as blogs do.
Yet another approach is provided by Smart Technologies, a company that has teamed up with centuries-old publisher Cambridge University Press to offer the Global Grid for Learning, consisting of more than a million pieces of copyright-cleared digital information. These include copyright-cleared images, video clips, audio files, text documents, and learning objects ready for teachers to incorporate into their lessons.
Before dismissing these options, educators should realize that failure to honor copyrights can cost them personally. "Teachers and librarians don't realize that although they're acting on behalf of the school and are not benefiting personally," Ensign warns, "it doesn't mean they're not personally liable."
This article was also published in the April 2008 issue of Edutopia magazine.
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Comments & Responses
Fair Use and Copyright Information
Readers might find these articles helpful to understand new interpretations of fair use:
New Fair Use Code of Practice: A Call to Action http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/1200036320.html and
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/code_for_media_literacy_education/
Pre-K what's infringment??
I would think that at an early elementary level it would be pretty easy to find a curriculum link to almost any movie shown. At pre-K everything you do is a learning opportunity. Am I infringing on copyright laws when I show a Barney movie??? Sounds pretty silly. When I worked daycare we used to do a movie time for the 3-4 year old room daily at 4:00 to 4:30. Each movie we showed wasn't necessarily linked to a lesson plan/objective. We tried to find good early childhood movies. Some of the best were personal ones I bought myself that were about Mother Goose or from the Peter Rabbit series. The main reason we showed these movies was to help calm the kids who were coming in for wrap around care when the class numbers went high for about 30 min. till parent's came to pick up their kids. Were we doing anything wrong? It was always child appropriate programing and only that short of a time.
Become Informed....Ignorance in this case is NOT Bliss!
Let me address the are of images. I teach a number of workshops and courses on visual literacy and web 2.0. There are enough websites out there that provide fabulous images which only require an attribution label.
Calispher from the University of California
http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/
Discovery Streaming (formerly 'United Streaming') - yes, it's a subscription website but they have numerous video clips that are 'editable', meaning that your students (or you) can remix the media and with the proper citation use it in projects/lessons. One benefit of Discovery Streaming and their image bank is that the citation information is already formated and listed for you and your students to simply copy/paste into whatever you are inserting the image into.
http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/
FlickrCC
http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/
Flickr Creative Commons
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons
Free Foto
http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp
They have a very clear usage requirement: "FreeFoto.com is made up of 115123 images with 148 sections organized into 3240 categories. You must credit the FreeFoto.com web site on your website or alongside any non commercial printed use. If you use one of the full screen images you must place a hypertext link with the line Supplied by FreeFoto.com in a conspicuous place. We also ask that you add a (c) FreeFoto.com to the image alt tag. Our educational policy is as follows: (1) Students may download and use our images in their own work. A credit to (c) Ian Britton - FreeFoto.com is required. (2) An individual teacher may make use of our images in the course of their own personal teaching work. A credit to (c) Ian Britton - FreeFoto.com is required. FreeFoto.com images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License and may be used in any students course work / Homework."
Free Images
http://www.freeimages.co.uk/
Again, clear usage information: "A link to this site is required where an image is used. Acceptable credits include 'image: www.freeimages.co.uk' You are free to edit the images in anyway you want, crop, re-size, perform any operation you want."
Free Pixels
http://www.freepixels.com/
New York Public Library Digital Collections
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm
Pics4Learning
http://pics4learning.com/
These are just a FEW of the resources I use when searching for images for myself or my students.
Please feel free to add to this list.
Fourth Grade
The whole copyright issue is confusing and sketchy. I think there are thousands of issues not even explored, and they are expanding daily as our world becmes more and more connected.
What about Netflix? I have a Netflix membership, and they offer films online. Am I allowed to show this to my class? What about a movie I rent from Redbox or Blockbuster?
If you read the book, are you allowed to show the movie to enhance understanding, or to compare and contrast elements in both forms?
What about playing music? Can I play a song from a CD? Can I type the lyrics for my students (for singing or anylsis?)
What about You Tube and Teacher Tube?
I always require my students to cite their sources, case in point, they are creating presentations, and one of their requirements is they include a slide for resources, whether it be an image or idea.
More explanations and clearer definitions need to be created to help teachers. I think it's ludicrous that teachers would be attacked about this matter. I don't know anyone who would do this with mal intent.
my stuff
If I draw a picture and put a copyright mark on it,without going through the state, what does that mean?
Copyright laws
I definitely do not consider copyright laws often enough. There are many times when my students do research that they don't adequately cite their source. Also, we use pictures from the internet for all sorts of projects. I have never considered giving credit to the cite where I found the picture. I need to make this a priority, not only to protect myself, but also to set an example for my students.
Copyright laws
I am never quite sure what I need to do to make sure I haven't overstepped the boundaries of copyright laws. To make myself safe I always try to make sure there is a ling to what I am talking about or put the exact address for others to view at a later time. As far as in my kindergarten classroom, this isn't really an issue.
Copy Wrongs: Teachers Looking Online for Material, Be Warned
This article did not give many ideas other than the linking idea. Linking is a bit annoying because at times there are so many links that by the time you research them all it is difficult to get back to your original site. The Lion King example rationale was a bit hazy for me as well.
Intepreting copyright laws
I always try to obey copyright laws. However, sometimes the law seems difficult to understand because I hear different interpretations or examples. I agree that the Lion King example was confusing. I agree that showing movies should be incorporated into the whole lesson or theme. If I bought a movie at home, I am permitted to invite some friends over to watch it.
I thought that copyright laws for movies permitted showing a movie to a group of students, especially in the classroom, as long as there was no profit made, or it was not being broadcast to a larger outside audience. For example, the school could not show it at an assembly where parents and families were invited, or it could not be displayed on an outdoor screen. Is this a correct interpretation of the law, or am I misguided?
I would like to see a list of ways to utilize fair use in the classroom.
copyright
Schools cannot show movies unless there is a direct curriculum tie to it. To show them as a reward or for a rainy day, you must purchase a movie license (see www.movlic.com for information on this). Our school used to do this a lot, but as a teacher-librarian, I received information on this being illegal. Just because you purchase the movie (for personal use), you do not have the right to show it to a group of students, no matter the size. You purchase it in good faith for personal use. With the internet being so accessible, it is important to teach students to cite all of their sources - even for pictures. Unfortunately most people believe that if it is online, it's free. Educators need to change this thinking.
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