Copyright & Fair Use in Media Literacy Education

By: Beatriz Falcon

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a protection given to creative works which gives limited property rights to creators.

What is Fair Use?

Fair use is a broadly written provision of the Copyright Act, which gives users the right to use copyrighted works without permission under certain circumstances.

Fair use is not something you must do, like asking for permission. Fair use is a right you have, provided by law, to reasonably use copyrighted works.

There are no “rules of thumb” to guide fair use. It is situational, based on context. This means that it is flexible.

Educational Use of copyrighted Material & Fair use

Under the Copyright Act, educational uses of copyrighted material are often considered fair use.

How to Make “Fair Use” of Material

Teacher Use: lesson planning & preparing & sharing curriculum materials

Copyrighted material can be integrated into curriculum materials

Use only what is necessary to meet the educational goal or purpose (this may be an excerpt or a whole work, depending on the educational goal or purpose).

Provide proper attribution wherever possible

Student Use: For own academic and creative work, and/or developing

audiences Students can incorporate, modify,

and re-present existing media objects in their own classroom work.

Use of copyrighted material should not be a substitute for their own creative effort.

Proper attribution should be provided wherever possible.

If student work meets the transformativeness standard (new material is used for a different purpose than that of the original), it can be distributed to wide audiences.

In situations where students wish to share their work more broadly, teachers should model the permissions process.

Keep in Mind…

If you or the school has agreed to a license, then you should follow the terms and conditions of such license.

Being sued over the use of media for educational purposes is highly unlikely.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation that makes it easy for individuals to share and build upon the work of others, by providing free licenses to mark creative work, consistent with copyright rules.

Creators choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work (license types):

• Attribution• Share alike• Non-commercial• No derivative work

Flickr

Flickr is an image sharing website that uses Creative Commons licensing. It is a great site for teachers to download images for their presentations and other works. Go to http://www.flickr.com, then do an “advance search” and click “only search CC licensing” to find images under Creative Commons licensing.

CreditsAll images in this presentation where taken from www.flickr.com.

Photographers, in order of appearance:

Kristin WolffA. Diez HerreroOlivia HotshotSteve RhodesTvolVirtual Learning CenterExtra KetchupMararieTvolEcstaticist

*Sound from Microsoft Clipart