Copyright Paradox

The Blog assignment for this week is kind of ironic. We are supposed to simply define what fair use is via copyright law and how does it applies to education, after reading multiple articles about it. So in reality all of our answers should be the same for the most part and will be derived or quoted from the articles. This in itself hopefully becomes an example of fair use as long as our explanations abide by the fair use policies.

To directly answer the posed question, “the basic idea of fair use is that a work can be used or copied for educational purposes as long as the use is not solely a substitute for purchasing copyrighted the work. - [To take it a step further] educational fair use is a use of the work for teaching, scholarship, or research. Congress took special steps to protect educational fair use and authored special protections for this type of use in the copyright law. The fair use statute provides that making “multiple copies for classroom use” is an example of fair use.

In determining whether a use qualifies as fair, courts will analyze four factors:

1. The purpose of the use, including whether the use is commercial or for nonprofit educational purposes.

2. The nature of the work; for example, is it a fact-based or highly creative work?

3. The amount of the work used in relation to the work as a whole; generally, the greater the amount used, the more likely that the use is not fair.

4. The effect of the use on the market and potential income for the work,” (Thompson, 2005, p.11).

In my above explanation of educational fair use I quoted K. A. Thompson from her article Copyright 101 from Learning & Leading with Technology. I am myself exhibiting educational fair use by taking a small piece of her work for a research based educational purpose, which I am not being compensated for, while giving her credit for it. Also, since we all were supposed to read it my use of the information is not taking away from anyone in the class reading the whole article and since our Blog audiences are small it does not inhibit outsiders from not reading it either.

When we do things on a day to day basis copyright is probably the last thing on everyone’s mind. I took the quiz first just to see where I was at with copy right knowledge before digging in. While taking the quiz and then reading the articles numerous instances flashed through my mind where I had previously used images in Power Point presentations, made copies at the library, downloaded music, have gotten to watch movies in school as entertainment, etc. I think definitely paying attention to the rules of fair use needs to be kept in the back our minds as we go forward with our careers in education.

Though, I do have to say that I am very glad that all of my intellectual property is legally seen as mine and I can hold people accountable if they do not abide by “fair use” practices.