Technology+Report

Copyright Concerns in Education
The amount of information, content and data available to students by way of the internet now presents a daunting task to educators and parents. Students are asked and required to research and produce papers, speeches and presentations during their scholastic career and this work requires them to obtain and use resources, many of which are on the internet.

Copyright refers to the Federal law that protects work created by authors of “original works of authorship” including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and certain other intellectual works from being copies, changed, or used without permission. Students and teachers can use portions of these works in academic work with proper credit and citations. The law also allows for “fair use” of these works in situations such as demonstrations and non-profit education purposes. Fair use is determined by the purpose of use, nature of the work, extent that material is used and effect on marketability of the material used. This means that it may be acceptable to use one paragraph of a book, but not the entire chapter. Fair use ends when the original author loses control over their work.

The best way to combat issues with copyright is to obtain permission from the copyright holder. In many cases the copyright holder may allow use of the information for free. The owners of the copyright in most cases want to ensure they receive proper credit for their work and citations of the owner are normally sufficient to satisfy their concerns. However if the work may potentially effect the value of their copyrighted work or take away the ability for them to make money, then the user may have to pay a fee to utilize the copyrighted material.

The general rule with copyright is when in doubt obtain permission. Other options include using content and material provided under a “creative commons” or “GNU open source” license agreement. Authors using either creative commons or GNU open source licensing retain the right to their works, but have given permission for those works to be used provided credit is given to the original author.

__[]__ __[]__ Davidson,Hall(2005)//.// Copyright Primer for Administrators. //Technology & Learning,// 25(11). Retrieved from Lamar Library