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Copyright Issues |
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There are many copyright issues that teachers need to know to keep in compliance of the law. Educators used to claim since it was for education they could use it. That is not the case anymore. While I don't claim to be a copyright expert here are just a few issues that many teachers who create websites, presentations, and/or digital stories need to be aware of that I have researched.
1. "Why can't I just claim 'Fair Use'?"
It is not that simple anymore. Fair use does allow you to use a limited amount of copyrighted material for educational purposes. But ask yourself these questions:
How much do I want to use?
Will it deprive the author of money they would have made?
Is there a non-profit educational purpose to the material I want to use?
2. "I found a picture on the Internet. Can I use it if there is not a copyright symbol?
Not everything on the Internet is Free. In fact even if there isn't a © symbol it is still copyrighted. Look for a terms of use section of the website. It will tell you if you can use the images from the site. When in doubt write a letter or email to the contact information on the website. Put "permission to use" in the subject line.
3. "How much text, music, or video can I use?"
For text you can use up to 10% or up to 1000 words.
For video you can use 10% or up to 3 minutes.
For music you can use up to 10% but nor more than 30 seconds of an individual piece of music.
4. "I want to put my student project (web page, presentation, digital story...) on a web site. Can I do that?"
While technically you can that may not be a good idea. Many times students can use copyrighted material for their student projects for school. But when that project is uploaded to the web it now can be seen by an audience outside of the confines of the classroom. Therefore it no longer falls under the definition of fair use.
Great links describing other copyright issues:
TeacherTube's Copyright page
US Copyright Office
- get it straight from the source
Cyberbee
Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers - also a PDF chart you
can download
The Copyright Website
Funny Video about Copyright - Click to download or stream the Fair(y)
Use tale
Always credit your source:
Noodletools
Citation machine
EasyBib
This page was last updated on
11/13/2008