Copyright Office Clarifies Fair-Use Rules

Yesterday, the US Library of Congress which oversees the Copyright Office handed down some decisions in favor of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's appeals regarding cell phones and fair use. The decisions mean that iPhone owners can now jailbreak their phones (the ruling isn't limited to iPhones, but iPhones were mentioned because Apple was opposed to the ruling). Here's an excerpt from the decision:
"When one jailbreaks a smartphone in order to make the operating system on that phone interoperable with an independently created application that has not been approved by the maker of the smartphone or the maker of its operating system, the modifications that are made purely for the purpose of such interoperability are fair uses."

Another decision announced yesterday makes it easier for people to create remix videos under the guidelines of fair-use. The Copyright Office declared that amateur remix artists don't violate DMCA rules when the use short excerpts from DVDs (or video cassettes if you can find one these days) to create new, noncommercial works for the criticism or critique.

Read more about these decisions in this EFF article. Read the full transcript of the decisions from the Copyright Office here (opens as PDF).

Applications for Education
These decisions from the Copyright Office mean that teachers and students can use, reuse, and remix materials with fewer worries of violating copyright rights.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Comprehensive Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright
Creative Thinking - Lessons About Copyright
Copyright for Educators

Copyright Watch - Listing of Global Copyright Laws

Copyright Watch, hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is designed for the purposes of sharing and comparing the copyright laws of countries around the world. As the world has become connected through the Internet the creation and global sharing of content has become very easy. At the same time the misuse of copyrighted content has become easier too. Sometimes copyright violations may be the result of conflicting copyright laws. Copyright Watch aims to provide a place where copyright laws can be compared and changes to copyright laws can be updated.

Applications for Education
Copyright Watch could be useful for teaching about the differences between copyright laws. Copyright Watch might also be useful as a part of a discussion about the purpose of copyright laws.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Comprehensive Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright
Creative Thinking - Lessons About Copyright
Copyright for Educators

Copyright Advisory Network Offers Copyright Clarity

The Copyright Advisory Network offers four resources that will be of particular interest to librarians and teachers. The Fair Use Evaluator helps you make a fair use determination. Exceptions for Educators provides a step-by-step guide to determining if you can use copyrighted materials in your instruction under the educators exemption. The Section 108 Spinner is a tool for deciding if you, as a librarian, can make a reproduction of a copyrighted work. The Public Domain Slider offers a simple scale for determining if a work is copyrighted or if it is in the public domain.

I learned about the Copyright Advisory Network through The Tech Savvy Educator's post about the Public Domain Slider.

Applications for Education
The four tools offered by the Copyright Advisory Network will not take the place of teaching students the difference between legal and illegal use of copyrighted materials. That said, these tools could be useful aid in teaching how to determine if and how a copyrighted work can be used.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Classroom Copyright Chart
Copyright for Educators
The End to Copyright Confusion
Video Introduction to Understanding Fair Use

Copyright Friendly - Copyright Friendly Resources

Copyright Friendly is a wiki full of links to copyright friendly images and sounds resources. With proper attribution (in some cases no attribution) the images and sounds found in the links can be used for websites, blogs, podcasts, and other multimedia presentations. In addition to the images and sounds resources, you will find links to resources for creating avatars, creating graphs, and creating concept maps.

Thanks to Fred Delventhal for the link to this wiki.

Applications for Education
Finding copyright friendly images and sounds can be a time-consuming task. The Copyright Friendly wiki provides you and your students with an abundance of excellent resources.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Creative Thinking - Lessons About Copyright
Copyright for Educators
Google Adds License Filter to Image Search

Classroom Copyright Chart

Copyright and Fair Use can be a confusing topic for students, teachers, and school administrators. Fortunately, there are quite a few good online resources to help teachers resolve confusion about copyright. One such resource that I recently came across is the Classroom Copyright Chart created by and hosted on the California Student Media Festival's website. The Classroom Copyright Chart provides teachers with clear explanations of when it is and when it is not okay to reproduce and reuse copyrighted materials. The chart can be viewed online or downloaded for printing and distribution within a school.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Comprehensive Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright
Fair Use and the Remix Culture

Comprehensive Lesson Plans for Teaching Copyright

On Friday Ars Technica ran a good article about the Electronic Frontier Foundation's attempt to balance a perceived bias in the Copyright Alliance's educational materials. If you read the article, make sure you scroll down through the comments where there are some good (and some inane) thoughts on the topic of teaching copyright laws in schools.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a set of comprehensive lesson plans about copyright simply titled Teaching Copyright. Teaching Copyright contains five lesson plans. Each lesson plan includes printable worksheets, readings, and suggested activities. For teachers looking for a little more information than is available in the lesson plans, the EFF has a good list of additional resources including videos on the topics of copyright and fair use. To stay up to date on new developments in copyright and fair use, you may want to the EFF blog.

Applications for Education
Copyright can be a confusing topic for adults as well as children. The EFF's Teaching Copyright lesson plans provide teachers with the materials and resources needed for teaching appropriate use of copyrighted materials.

Here are some related resources that may be of interest to you:
Copyright for Educators
The End to Copyright Confusion
Video Introduction to Understanding Fair Use

Fair Use and the Remix Culture

For teachers interested in learning about fair use and the use of media in the classroom the Center for Social Media at American University has some excellent video explanations of fair use. The video I've embedded below offers an explanation of fair use as it relates to creating remixes. In addition to the video embedded below the Center for Social Media offers documents about best practices for online video. The Center for Social Media also offers video examples of best practices.

People viewing this in RSS may need to click through to Free Technology for Teachers to view the video.

Here are some related resources that may be of interest to you:
Video Introduction to Understanding Fair Use
Copyright for Educators
The End to Copyright Confusion

Video Introduction to Understanding Fair Use

A couple of weeks ago I shared a post about Wesley Fryer's presentation Copyright for Educators. If you haven't seen the presentation, I highly recommend viewing it. While Mr. Fryer's presentation is great, it is an hour long and probably a little bit more than you can or need to share to with students that are just beginning to learn about copyright. That's where this excellent video from the Temple Media Education Lab comes in handy. This three minute music video provides a good introduction to fair use.


Applications for Education
This video is good for introducing students and colleagues to the basics of copyright and fair use. The Temple Media Lab provides an excellent collection of case studies, FAQs, and lesson plans for teaching about fair use of copyrighted materials in education.

Here are some related blog posts that may be of interest to you:
The End to Copyright Confusion
Creative Commons Explanations and Teaching Materials
The Story of the Obama "Hope" Poster

Copyright for Educators

I bookmarked this presentation a few months ago and forgot about until I was searching for information about copyright for some of my colleagues. Copyright for Educators is a presentation given by Wesley Fryer in February at ITSC. Mr. Fryer's presentation clarifies some common confusions and misunderstandings regarding the use of copyrighted material in the classroom. Of particular interest to me in this presentation is the discussion of fair use practices related to using images in digital presentations.
The presentation is almost an hour in length, but well worth the time to watch.

Copyright for Educators

View more presentations from Wesley Fryer.

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The Story of the Obama "Hope" Poster

One of the most iconic images of the 2008 US Presidential campaign was the Barack Obama "hope" poster. The image was even used as Time magazine's cover for their "person of the year" issue in December. This morning the CBS Sunday Morning Show ran a segment profiling the artist that created the image. A video of the segment is embedded below the "applications for education" section.

Applications for Education
The story in the video raises a couple of issues of relevance to classrooms. First, because the image in the poster was created from an Associated Press photo, there is a question regarding fair use of copyrighted images. This story is a good resource for starting a discussion about students about the use of copyrighted images.

Art teachers and students will also be interested in this video as it brings up the question of what is art?


Watch CBS Videos Online

If you're viewing this in an RSS reader you may need to visit the blog directly to see the video.

Code of Best Practices... Media Literacy Education

Fair use practices with regard to using copyrighted materials in the classroom can be a complicated and confusing topic for educators. The Center for Social Media at American University has published a document, The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, to guide teachers and provide clarity about the use of copyrighted materials in the classroom. The document is twenty pages long and can be downloaded here or you can read a summary of it on the Center for Social Media's website.

The video below is an introduction to the document.