Copyright and Fair Use

Last week we learned about the importance of being good Digital Citizens in the digital society. One of the most important issues addressed by Digital Citizenship was related to copyright and plagiarism. In the article What is a Copyright?, they defined Copyright as follows:

“Copyright is a form of protection grounded in the U.S. Constitution and granted by law for original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works.”

It is important for everyone to be aware of the Copyright laws, as it is considered a crime to plagiarize or use someone else’s work without permission. Besides being a crime, it is unethical to try to get benefits from another person’s work. As teachers, we have the responsibility to teach our students the importance of respecting our own and other people’s work. Every day in our classes we gather information from different resources, including pictures, videos and text. The best way to teach students about respecting Copyright is to do it ourselves first. There are so many webpages and resources that belong to Creative Commons, which we can use in our presentations or worksheets and that we should encourage students to use as well. In the video Creating Commons & Copyright Info, they provide us with the following essential information:

“Copyright enables people to say who can share and reuse their creations. You must obtain someone’s permission before sharing or reusing their work even when it’s posted online.”

"Creative Commons" allows us to have access to a wide variety of digital media for free with the only condition of respecting the aspects included in each kind of license. In the video Copyright and Creative Commons, they explain that Creative Commons is a set of licenses which we can use to make copyrighted material free for sharing, so this material can be accessed by everyone as long as users follow the rules specified by each kind of license. For example, we can use some pictures found in Flicker but only if we give credit to the person who took these pictures (the original creator). However, we can’t modify the work found online and we can’t commercialize it. These rules vary from work to work, so teachers need to be aware of the license we are working with and teach this to our students.

Something we can use as an example of ways to teach our students about Copyright and fair use is found in the video titled Understanding “Fair Use” in a Digital World. In my opinion, the activity that this teacher used with her students was very interesting. They analyzed examples of mashups and parodies and had discussions to decide whether they were cases of fair use or not. I think that providing them with real and familiar examples can help students be interested in the topic as well as help them start thinking critically about their own decisions. It is important that teachers understand the copyright laws and respect them first, so that we can be able to teach our students later.

I think it doesn’t matter what subject we teach, we will always use material found on the Internet, so it is essential to make students understand how Copyright laws work and avoid any confusions that can lead to plagiarism or unfair use. We need to make sure they apply this knowledge on their tasks as it will be useful for both their academic and professional life.