Copyright and Fair Use

Hey Everybody! My name is Tek. I ’ m going to be your guide today! I ’ m a part of i-SAFE, and we are concerned with helping you to be safe online. We want you to recognize and avoid dangerous, destructive or unlawful online behavior, and we hope to empower you to communicate what you learn from i- SAFE with others.

The Plan For this lesson you will be furthering your knowledge on copyright and fair use. You will be working with scenarios to determine applicable uses of the fair use law.

All Right – Let’s Get Started We’ll Start with a Review! Who remembers what Intellectual Property means? What about Copyright?

Definition Review 1.Intellectual Property: Intangible products of a creator such as songs, poems, ideas, etc. 2.Copyright: Provides legal protection to tangible expressions of intellectual property. 3.Plagiarism: Presenting another’s work as your own. Example: Cutting and pasting into a research document without giving credit.

Today we will be learning more about Copyright and something called Fair Use Lawmakers realized that sometimes to advance education, students and teachers need to use products that are copyrighted. To cover these situations they developed the Fair Use Laws. Let’s take a look at the Activity Pages

Fair Use is a term used to cover the exceptions to copyright law that courts have set forth. This lesson will help you understand when material (after giving credit) can be fairly used without contacting the creator.

Think About It: Why might Fair Use Exceptions be granted? How would school and education be different if we didn’t have Fair Use exceptions to copyright?

Fair Use: What Do You Need To Know? Let’s take a closer look at the activity page.

The Basics For students, fair use is fairly easy: You can use graphics and content for educational purposes in small amounts. 30 seconds of a song, 1 picture from a book, etc. Give credit so that you aren’t guilty of plagiarizing. Remember that work cannot be publicly displayed or put into a situation where it could be distributed or copied. ( Examples - website, contest, sell for school funds, etc.)

The Purpose of Fair Use Fair Use is supposed to give you the right to enhance your education AND protect the creators and their monetary rights. To violate Fair Use laws is to violate copyright. Violations of copyright can carry some hefty penalties. And remember, there is no such thing as “not copyrighted.” When you produce something, you automatically hold the copyright.

An Example: Let’s say you are doing a multimedia presentation for school. Under fair use laws you are allowed to use material found on the Internet or from cds, books, etc. in your presentation without getting permission from the author. However, if you use this material without giving credit to the creator in a bibliography you are plagiarizing. In other words - use it, but cite your source.

Here’s Where it Gets Tricky! Let’s say you do give credit for the music and photos you use in the bibliography and you aren’t guilty of plagiarizing. You’ve correctly followed fair use and your project gets an A+. Your teacher wants to showcase your work on the school website. Is this Fair Use? A+A+A+A+A+A+A+

No! Unfortunately, No! You can’t display work in a public forum without permission from the original creators. To present the project you are allowed to use music and pictures for an educational purpose – as soon as you go public with it, such as on the Internet, it is no longer considered fair use.

I hope you learned something – I know I did! All right – Time for an Activity!!! You’re going to evaluate some scenarios. Your teacher will decide how you conduct this activity – we’ll meet back here later to discuss!

Based on those scenarios what have we learned? 1.What are some valid fair use exceptions? 2.What were some scenarios where fair use did not apply? 3.What should you do if Fair Use does not apply and you want to use the work?

Let’s Talk about Your School Projects 1.When have you made use of the fair use exceptions? 2.When has your teacher made use of the fair use exceptions? 3.Why do we still need to cite sources?

Group Project Time Your teacher will divide you into groups to brainstorm some rules to serve as reminders of copyright law and fair use exceptions. When you’re done present your rules to the class and discuss.

How Do you Know When You’re Done? Have you: 1. Completed the activity pages? 2. Discussed what you have learned with your class?

It doesn’t have to end here! Find out about DRiVE!

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