I agree with the article that most teachers and college profs are
well-meaning, but generally lack a firm grounding in what is "Fair Use". The
abuse I tend to see most is the teacher who has an immediate need to use a
piece of media. So, without thinking it through, quickly copies and
distributes it to their classroom(s). It's done and gone within a few days
and to their thinking, "no harm, no foul".
The other side of the coin is that educators should definitely be
"uber-aware" of how this applies to their students. To me the problem here
is that "uber-awareness" means that many schools don't allow students to do
anything with online media creation - - "If you can't get into the game, you
can't commit a foul" theory.
THE "GOOFUS AND GALLANT" SOLUTION
We don't need any additional lengthy legalese on the subject. What we DO
need is a simple graphical depiction of how to apply fair use. I'd like to
see something like "Goofus and Gallant" where we see someone doing it wrong
and then someone doing it right. So if I had a question about using a 15
minute scene from a DVD in my classroom, I could click on "DVD Use" and then
see fair use abused and correctly interpreted (even with a sense of humor).
As Bill mentioned, there's an urgent need for "Fair Use" education and
ethical practice by everyone. It needs to be consistent and it needs to be
critically reviewed from time to time so we can keep up with emerging
technologies.
A couple sites:
"Modeling Honesty and Resourcefulness"
http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm
"K-12 Copyright Laws: Primer for Teachers"
http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Teachers/copyrightlaw.html
Keith Mack
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.literacyworkshop.org
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