What's RIGHT about Copyright?

Where we would be without copyright laws?  Well for starters anyone could take anyone's work without any problems.  Sounds like legal plagiarism to me. We have all seen the copyright symbol (pictured left) but I wonder how many people really abide by copyright laws.   

According to (Lever-Duffy & McDonald, 2008) whether you copy pages from text, music from a CD, or multimedia clips from the Internet, you may be in violation of copyright laws. As the authors mentioned someone put their time, energy, and creative talent into the product that they have created and has the complete right to decide how it is to be used and to profit from his or her work.

I think about ethics when I think about copyright laws.  If it is not correct, then don't do it-don't violate it.  Please allow me to help.  Use the three guidelines below and consider these facts regarding copyright laws:

             1. You are not granted special permission to buy one license of a
                 particular product, make copies, and distribute to your entire class or school;

             2. Work of others should never be posted online without permission; and

             3. All info on the Internet is copyrighted in some way, regardless if you see the copyright sign
                 or not-don't take it for granted.

Perhaps number one and number two are the most important points to remember.  Not only you, but current educators should be aware of purchasing a certain licenses for educational purposes. In addition, you should  also be aware that the "how many" question is always asked.  Purchasing one license and supplying the software to more than one is unethical.  In Why Teachers Violate Copyright (2008), it is explained that a school district in Texas purchased a single copy of a high-stakes assessment workbooks for each grade level, then sent the copies to the district print shop. The print shop duplicated a copy for each student in the district. The copyright owner found out, and sued the district, alleging $7 million in damages!!!!  Be careful not to put you or your school system in this situation. To be on the safe side, use fair use judgement before proceeding in situations like this.

Secondly, refer back to number 2 (one cannot reproduce, distribute, or electronically transmit the work of others without their permission).  This seems easy, makes a lot of sense actually. If you have done this, avoid doing it again.  Remember, you must gain the permission before doing so.

Abiding by copyright isn't hard...just avoid doing the wrong things.

References

Garner, T.  (2008).  Why teachers violate copyright? National Council of Teachers of English.  Retrieved on March 9, 2011 from http://ncteinbox.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-i-have-violated-copyright.html. 

Lever-Duffy, J. and McDonald, J. (2008).  Teaching and learning with technology.  3rd edition.  New York:  Pearson