Copyright

What law that we learned about in class surprised you the most? Why?

There were a lot of laws that we talked about in class that surprised me a little. In fact there are too many and I am trying to remember them all. I remember one specifically that was about copying pages out of a workbook and something else, with only the workbook being illegal to copy but I forget what it was. I was surprised about being able to copy recipies, just not the titles because the recipie is the important part, not the title. So my first thought is who cares about the title, the recipie should be copyrighted. Another thing that surprised me was the whole discussion on parodies. I was very surprised that someone could take someone else's work, just change the words or a couple things here or there, and get away with it. For example, parodies of songs using the same background music are ok, but then there was another song that took 4 notes from another song and they were guilty of copyright infringement. Then we also talked about how a parody of a play is ok even if it costs money to see, but charging nothing for putting on someone else's work is still illegal. I would think that if one does not make money off of it, then copyright may not be as strict, but that is not the case, which does kind of make sense. The parody case with the Saturday Night Live parody of the New York song really surprised me just because it was the same exact song. I could have gotten confused on some of these, this gray area is a killer.

Do you have any specific examples of teachers who have violated copyright law?

I cannot think of any major examples off of the top of my head of teachers who have violated copyright law with two exceptions. I know that I have been in school and a teacher has just put a movie on to keep the class quiet without us having any prior knowledge of the movie and the movie was not at all relevent to the class. Also, I know teachers who have made copies from textbooks or workbooks when they probably should not have because they only wanted to use ten or so pages from one book and it was not worth distributing the books to everyone. Other than those two I cannot think of examples of copyright infringement.

Is it your responsibility as a teacher to teach students respect for copyright? Do you think teachers should have to pay attention to copyright?

I do believe that it is a teacher's responsibility to teach students respect for copyright. I do not necessarily think that there needs to be a lesson in the middle of my math lesson about copyright, but maybe another class informing students about some major copyright laws. Music downloading is a big topic that could be addressed in schools. Besides outwardly teaching students about copyright, I think that teachers need to model the behavior. I can say that I got a few of the questions wrong when we played our copyright game because of what I saw my teachers do when I was in school. I saw my teachers do something, assumed that it was ok, so I thought it was legal. Now I know that I should not assume that all of my teachers abided by the law. Students are very impressionable and teachers are often viewed as role models. Students take note of what the teacher does, and a lot of times they will mimic that behavior because they assume that the teacher is doing what is right. That is why I think that teachers should have to pay attention to copyright; they are setting an example to the students.

Will you model copyright ethics when you are a teacher? How?

I will certainly try to model copyright ethics, but I doubt it will be easy and I doubt I will be perfect. Anytime I am thinking about copying something or showing the students something in class, I will have to look up a copyright law attached to it. Or, if I know someone working in my school who is well read on copyright law, I will have no problem asking for advice. I always have asked too many questions, and in dealing with copyright that is probably the safest way to go. I will try and think of the major questions we addressed in class though. For example, I will think if what I am doing will be taking substantial money away from the person who the work belongs to. How much of the work am I using? Does this definitely pertain to something that I am teaching? Questions such as those. Other than that, I just have to be careful and check myself often when looking at using someone else's work.