Copyright- What matters?

Well, after reading as much information on this as I can process at this time, I probably have more questions than answers. When we were dealing primarily with books and encyclopedias, it was relatively easy to know how to teach about the importance of copyright and what we could and could not do. Since the advent of the Web, there seems to have been a bit more haziness around the issue, with many assuming that its public format meant it was free to be used in any way we saw fit. Cutting and pasting made writing those term papers all too easy,Google images are copied freely and there seems to be many who are not aware that copyright of any work must always be assumed. I read recently that pictures from Flickr were used without permission for commercial gain and that person is being sued. Yet many of those pictures are posted (I believe) with the understanding that they may be used with certain provisos in place. Creative Commons, which I was unfamiliar with, allows persons to license their work for sharing purposes. It also becomes clear that even if sharing is allowed, acknowledgement must still be made. What I do see, though, is that very few people are able to keep up with the changing rules, least of all busy teachers, who still sometimes allow students to “surf” the Web and use whatever they find.

I think what students need to understand is that all published work is copyrighted. They need to know that their own original work is copyrighted. They need to know how to determine if work can be used because of Creative Commons licensing or other sharing privileges. They need to know that the use of any information must still be credited.

I had a brief discussion over lunch today with some of my staff about copyright in regards to the internet. Certainly, very little thought has been given to this issue- in fact, I would say it appears to be more of a non-issue for adults and students alike. Some of the questions raised were in regards to pictures or graphics. May we still use a portion for our own use and may we still use 10% if used for educational purposes?

 I read through Copyright Matters again and the bottom line for me is that I NEED to become more aware of the rules surrounding copyright; for as the booklet states “you are educating the copyright owners and users of tomorrow.”