Copyright, Public Domain, and Creative Commons Licenses

What is your responsibility as a teacher to understand and use images with copyright, public domain, and creative commons licenses?

     An issue that often arises with the use of technology is the issue of copyright. Teachers and students are often unaware of what is allowed to be used and what isn't allowed to be used inside and outside of the classroom. It is our responsibility as teachers to understand copyright laws and to help our students understand copyright laws. As our society becomes more reliant on technology, we want our students to know what they are allowed to use and what they are not allowed to use.
     Teachingcopyright.org gives a lot of information on what copyright is and isn't. They give us a definition of copyright: Their website tells us that "copyright is a form of legal protection automatically provided to the authors of original works of authorship, including literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works". So from this, we can determine that copyright is meant to protect the creator of artistic works. By incorrectly using these works, we are violating a policy, which is called copyright infringement.
     There is a document called, "A Teacher's Guide to Fair Use and Copyright" by Cathy Newsome that lays out what exactly copyright covers. In this document, there is a chart that lays out fair use compared to illegal use of different materials. This is a great reference point for teachers who are unsure whether or not their material is allowed to be used in the classroom.
     Creative commons licenses help to get material shared more easily. There are different creative commons licenses, which allow you to decide the level of copyright on your material. We need to know the different types of creative commons licenses so that we can use materials properly. We know when we see a C symbol, it is necessary to contact the creator before sharing the image. However, if we see a cc symbol, we can follow the rules for how to properly use this material. If you have any further confusion, watch the video on this link, done by Common Craft, for more information.

What are our responsibilities to use (and teach students) to select images, text, video, and audio with proper citations?

     It is our responsibility to teach students how to properly select and cite images, text, video, and audio. We need to give credit to individuals who create content. We also need to help students to understand the importance of copyright.

     We also need to teach them about Creative Commons and the different licenses that we see so they know how to use and cite the material correctly. The following video, done by The Teaching Channel and Common Sense Media, follows Novella Bailey. She is a teacher at a middle school in New York who is helping us to learn how to teach our students about many of these issues.

What are the ethical issues around music and movie downloading? How can this be addressed with your students?

     The major ethical issues around music and movie downloading are fair use issues. By illegally downloading works that don't belong to us, we are taking someone's work without giving them credit. By doing so, we are participating in copyright infringement, which is illegal. By teaching students about the problems that arise by illegally downloading materials, we can hopefully get them to find better, legal sources. We also need to help students to understand the importance of copyright. I would like to have students create original material (videos, artwork, etc.). I would then tell them that someone took the material without paying for it. Then we could have a group discussion about how this makes them feel. They worked hard to create this material, and aren't receiving payment for it. This would be a good way to have students really understand the true importance of copyright infringement.