Copyright in the Classroom

By Yun Zhan 

image from: http://www.nuttyhistory.com/copyright--fair-use.html

It in fact took me more than one hour to record the following questions. I’m not sure that they count as questions in the “research world”, but I did find the whole experience very much fun and I just couldn’t stop myself.

My general interest is in COPYRIGHT. I’m particularly interested in COPYRIGHT IN CLASSROOMS, because of my personal background as a teacher, and also because I found that many of my coworkers (including me) were confused by copyright issues. I hope my future research could help resolve these real life issues.

The categorization of my questions may not be accurate. I did it just to help myself clarify my own thoughts.

Law

·         What are the guidelines regarding copyright in the classroom?

·         What are the accurate definition of terms related to copyright law, such as Fair Use, Public Domain, etc…?

·         Is the copyright law today achieving its goal of “enhancing the public good”? In other words, does the law align with current practice?

·         Is it true that great flexibilities are left to allow for new technologies and uses of copyrighted works in the classrooms? If yes, what are the flexibilities an what is the effect of these flexibilities, especially in today’s increasingly digitalized world? Also, what are the purposes of leaving these flexibilities?

Practice

·         There are a lot of situations in which teachers and students will be using copyrighted works. The law itself is not clear, thus making its practices in the classroom either illegal or conservative. Who can teachers and students refer to and what are they supposed to do when they are in doubt?

·         What can librarians do to raise copyright awareness among teachers and students?

·         YouTube practices are generally recognized as effective. What does this imply to education? Are there any practices that can be borrowed in classrooms?

Cases

·         What is the case “Metallica et al v. Napster” about?

·         What is the Ted Talk “Laws that Choke Creativity” about?

·         What other cases do I have to know in order to further investigate?

Expression

Reading copyright law is like walking through a battlefield full of landmines, where you can encounter a lot of negative and frustrating expressions such as “banning, forbidding, not allowed, illegal, violation, infringement…”. Indeed, there are plenty of pitfalls, and this would give people an impression that you’d better not do something, otherwise you might very probably be breaking the law. This, however, is against the spirit of Fair Use. Are there better ways to write the law so that people would understand its ultimate aim of “stimulating artistic creativity for the general public good” and make this aim come true?