Copyright, Teaching, Learning and Digital Media

Authors: J. Katherine Youngblood, Kristen Hokanson and Clif Mims

Table of Contents

Overview

The advent of the Internet and web technologies has made digital media much easier for the average person on the street to create some pretty interesting products. Unfortunately, the ease of accessibility to digital media in a copy and paste world combined with misconceptions of copyright law has led to litigation often enough that teachers and administrators often choose not to use digital media (Hobbs, 2008). This module looks at the concept of copyright and its application in the field of education. Specifically, we will be looking at the applicable laws, appropriate use and correct attribution of digital media in the teaching and learning arena.

Copyright has become a very important topic in education. It is important that we properly acknowledge the work of others and that we teach our students to do this, too. This has to become a habit for all of us as the legal ramifications for not properly referencing others' work can be substantial.

There are 2 issues which one must understand regarding the use of copyrighted materials: Copyright and Fair Use.

Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of the owners of the copyrighted content, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation.

The Limitations on Exclusive rights (known as fair use of copyrighted material) according to U.S. Code Title 17 107 states that "the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or nonprofit
2. the nature of the use
3. the amount of the use
4. the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work."

Today, courts’ analysis of fair use issues tend to center on the question: Is the use “transformative?” Content creators need to consider what value their new work is contributing to the copyrighted material and whether their use is for a purpose different from that for which it originally was intended. The idea of "transformativeness" involves modifying material, putting material in a new context, or both.

This creates many misconceptions about Fair Use that we need to be aware of when creating educational content.

The TEACH Act

In an attempt to clarify the fair use defense for teaching in the internet age, congress passed the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2002 (TEACH act) which effectively rewrote Title 17 Section 110(2). [1][2] The act primarily revolves around "mediated instruction activities" which are meant to model the the live classroom in the online environment.

The TEACH act intends that the copyrighted work be accessible to the student for a limited amount of time and that reasonable technological measures will be taken to ensure that only the students have access to the copyrighted materials and that the materials can’t be copied by the students and re-distributed. As a practical matter, that means having that material inside an LMS like WebCT or D2L and putting video and music on a streaming server when it is available. Teachers are not expected nor required to become computer experts.

While the conditions for the online use of most classes of copyrighted work are spelled out in the law, there are two classes of work specifically excluded from fair use by the TEACH act: 1) products specifically designed for distance education and 2) copies of works that are not obtained legally. North Carolina State University maintains an excellent resource explaining the in's and out's of the TEACH act and also includes handy checklists [1] to allow teachers to evaluate their use of copyrighted materials under the act.

• Note: (8/5/9) both NCSU links render 404 page not found. TEACH Act Toolkit can be found at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dspc/legislative/teachkit/ (JBates)

The TEACH act also requires that institutions have a published copyright guidelines and that they make their students and teachers aware of them.

Applications in Teaching and Learning

In a recent conversation I heard a judicial advocate at a university describe a case she had mediated where the student didn't believe he had plagiarized because he had gotten his information, word for word from the Internet, not an encyclopedia. This demonstrates the confusion students must be feeling related to the mysteries of copyright. As educators educate themselves about the principles of copyright infringement and acknowledgment so too must they provide the tools of understanding to their learners.

Teaching & Learning Resources

Bochicchio (2008) gives an excellent account of her war on plagiarism as a high school English teacher. By setting ground rules, maintaining open communication with her students and involving parents she was able to whittle away at the plagiarism rate in her high school classes and foster creativity in her students.

Another resource for educating students about copyright principles can be found in the WebQuest Plagiarism Workshop created by Janice Cooper (2003). This site provides an excellent resource as a lesson plan on plagiarism and copyright principles for 8th-12th grade students.

A third resource for educators interested in teaching students about copyright and plagiarism is Kathy Schrock's Copyright Guide for Educators where lesson plans on copyright for grades 4-12 as well as other informational links are available for use.

Citation of Digital Media

Plagiarism, the act of representing someone else's ideas or works as your own is considered dishonest, fraudulent and unethical (Wikipedia,2008). It is not wrong to quote thoughts or build upon others' ideas but the original source must be cited. There are severalstyles for citing electronic or digital media. APAstyle.org gives a detailed listing of how to document electronic sources according to the APA Style Manual. Online! and Son of Citation Machine also provide templates for correctly citing references for the APA, MLA and Chicago Manual of Style. A note of caution here, while online templates are nice to use it is always best to refer to the actual manual to be sure of the correct documentation format.

License Resources

In addition to teaching students how to properly cite others' works educators should endeavor to teach their students to think about how they want to share their own work. From the minute something is created it is the property of the author. However, unless registered in some way, original ownership can become a muddy prospect. A clear, documented statement of how an author is willing to share his work would go a long way in clearing up much of the confusion surrounding copyright law. Perhaps additionally, a student's reflection of the value of his own work and how he chooses to share that work may foster respect for the value of another person's endeavor.

Creative Commons is a group founded in 2001 with the express purpose of providing people with intellectual property a way of stating how they would like to share their creations. By using the web application created by this organization, an author may state exactly how the work they have created may be shared.

The conditions applied by a Creative Commons license include: 1) Attribution 2) Noncommercial 3) No Derivative Works 4) Share Alike and may be used in any combination available. Another option is for the author to declare their work part of the public domain. By using the Creative Commons application those who create products can clearly share their work with others and protect their rights at the same time.

Additional Resources

The resources below can help to develop an understanding of the misconceptions of copyright and fair use issues.

1. Look through Diigo bookmarks and groups - Clif Mims
2. Spectrum of Rights (comic) - @debot
3. ITM's Creative Commons in Education
4. U.S. Copyright Office
5. Turn It In.com
   
6. Copyright, Cybercourtesy, & Cybersafety in a Creative Commons Age - Cherice Montgomery
7. The Copyright Site - kmulford
8. Cyberethics page from the U.S. Dept of Justice - kmulford
9. Hall Davidson's resources - @joebjr
10. Cherice Montgomery's Copyright Bookmarks on Copyright and Fair Use- @chericem
11. Technology Blog: Is the Concept of Copyright Changing? - kmulford
12. Copyright Mess - Work for Hire by Miguel Guhlin
13. Dealing with Copyright - Diigo Forum
14. Copyright and Fair Use from Temple University's Media Education Lab - @khokanson
15. Copyright Confusion - @khokanson
16. Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in Online Video - Center for Social Media at American University
17. Stanford Copyright and Fair Use - a comprehensive resource for copyright information from Stanford University
18. Teach Digital: Curriculum by Wes Fryer l Copyright -Copyright, Fair Use, & Intellectual Property for Educators
    

Outside of the US:

Dealing with Copyright (Australia) - It is important to note that Australia does not have a doctrine of fair use. They operate under a doctrine of fair dealing.

Sources of Public Domain or Creative Commons Licensed works:

1. The Federal Government - the work of most federal agencies is not covered by copyright [1]
2. Ibiblio - a massive index of public domain works maintained by UNC Chapel Hill
3. Project Gutenberg - an online collection of public domain texts in multiple formats (often including audio)
4. Copyright Term Chart - to help identify if a work is public domain based on it's age (from Cornell University)
5. Creative Commons Search - a search utility for works released under a Creative Commons license

References

Bochicchio, K. (2008, June). Beat the cheat: Teaching students (and parents) it's not ok to copy. Edutopia. Retrieved on July 18, 2008 from http://www.edutopia.org/student-plagiarism-teacher-strategy

Cooper, J. (2003) WebQuest: Plagiarism workshop Retrieved on July 19, 2008 from https://mail.nvnet.org/~cooper_j/Plagiarism/

Faden, E. (n.d.). A fair(y) use tale. Media Education Foundation. Retrieved July 18, 2008 from http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/documentary-film-program/film/a-fair-y-use-tale

Hobbs, R. (2008, March 12). Copyright confusion is shortchanging our students.edweek.org. Retrieved July 24, 2008 from
http://www.rvanbrunt.com/2008/03/copyright-confusion-is-shortchanging.html

Hobbs, R., Jaszi, P. & Aufderheide, P. (2008). Ten common misunderstandings about fair use. Philadelphia: Media Education Lab.

Retrieved on 5/6/2008 from: http://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php?page=27

Plagiarism. (2008, July 21). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. RetrievedJuly 24, 2008, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plagiarism&oldid=227068145


** NOTE: It will be expected that you always properly reference/ cite/ acknowledge the work of others in everything that you do in this class. This includes narrative citations, the use of images, video, and audio, etc.


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