That's all well and good to know, but really what does it all mean?
| Teachers
BEWARE |
|
| Are you a
Copyright Culprit? |
|
| Teachers are sometimes the
biggest copyright offenders out there, but at the same time we have
different rules. Do you copy every page out of a book for your
students? Or do you run off articles for all students to have a copy
of? Do you know what you should and should not reproduce? |
| If you can't these questions,
then read on ahead for a quick teachers guide to copyright laws. |
| What are copyright laws? |
| According to the United States
Copyright Office copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws
of the United States to the authors of “original works of authorship,”
including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other
intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and
unpublished works. |
| Four Factor test of Fair-Use |
| When it comes to copyright, it
all gets very confusing and complicated sometimes. The only true way to
have it resloved is to take your case to the US Federal court
system. Here judges usually determine a ruling by a case to case
basis, using four factors.These four factors are: the purpose and
character of your use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount
and substantiality of the portion taken, and the effect of the use upon
the potential market. That's all well and good to know, but really what does it all mean? |
| The purpose and character of
your use basically means is the original work being used to create
something new or is it being copied word for word on the "new" work? It
is not ok to copy an authors book, article, or piece of work with out
directly quoting and sighting the material. |
| The nature of the copyrighted
work means that you have more freedom to borrow information from a
non-fiction text than a fiction text. Because using facts and
ideas from those types of books benefits society as a whole,while
information from a play or novel will not. Also there is a
stronger case if the information is taken from a published piece of
work, because the author has the rights to the first apperance of the
work to the public. |
| The amount and sustainability of
the potion taken refers to the amount is taken from the work,
obviously. The less you take from a piece the more likely it will
be dismissed as fair use, but if the "heart" of the piece is used the
case will most likely hold up as copyright infringment. |
| The effect of the use upin the
potential market basically means: are you taking away any potential
income for the creator. A good example of poor use would be
illeagally downloading music and sharing with your friends. The
artist has now lost income because the CD was not purchased. |
| The Do's and Don'ts of Teachers
and copying |
| DO's |
DON'Ts |
| A single copy of: a chapter,
short story, article, poem, graph |
Several chapters from a book, articles from a magazine, consumables (workbook pages), excersise sheets or ditto sheets. |
| Complete poem less than 250
words, excerpt from
long poem that is no more than 250 words,
article, story, or essay less than 2,500 words, one chart, graph,
diagram, picture, or
non-syndicated cartoon perbook, classroom quantities of current news,
articles not copyrighted. All multiple copying must be at the descretion of the individual teacher and the decision to use the material is made in a time that copyright permision could be granted if need be. |
Using/making multiple copies of same material year after year, copying workbooks and other works meant to be used once by one student, copying more than one or two excerpts from a single author during one class term, copying from workbooks, tests, or other consumables. copying a blacklined master. |