Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Fair Use in the Classroom


 


In an era so sensitive to fair use and copyright infringements, there are bound to be thousands of cases like this, where groups get together and figure out what our limitations are, why they exist, and judge fairness based upon set legalities. The article, "Fair use group comes up with copyright primer", basically introduces "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education". This code was recently developed on November 11th, 2008. Media literacy organizations banded together over a course of an entire year to explore what their members thought of as "fair". Meetings took place in cities around the country including Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco, Austin, St. Louis, Columbia, and Ithaca. 

As we all know already fair use allows the public domain to use copyrighted material without permission or any sort of payment under the conditions that the benefits of its use to society outweighs the cost of the copyright owner. Because of the flexibility and dynamic characteristics of fair use, it favors "transformative uses". These transformative uses add content to already copyrighted material. The article was basically written into five different categories. The five categories consist of, Classroom teaching With Copyrighted Materials, Copyrighted Material Within Curriculum, Sharing Teaching Materials, Student Work, and Sharing Student Work. 

The right of fair use not only helps exercise the freedom of expression, but is essential in developing communication and critical thinking skills required for our future generations to be successful in the 21st century.

To conclude, the whole point of the creation of The Code of Best Practices was to make rights more clear and create awareness of teachers and students in an academic climate. Instead of strangling educational practices by fuzzy/unsure lines of fair use, the code justifies the rights of legalities in a way that documentary filmmakers, broadcasters, and journalists understand fair use and copyright laws today. 

2 comments:

Matt Dudek said...

With the creation of the "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education" I believe we have taken a crucial step in helping identify fair use. I remember the good ole days of bringing in movies to school and just watching whatever. If I had known that we were breaking a law maybe we would have changed our minds about our decision that day. I find it very useful that this group created a dumbed down version of fair use so everyone will know what's right and wrong.

HAYNE said...

I have this terrible feeling that "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education" is going to leave our generation in the dust of today's 1st graders. It's great that the guidelines of fair use is finally being implemented into basic everyday jargon. The (hopeful) increase in awareness will make the idea of fair use more concrete and less of this scary and ambiguous copyright swamp. I agree with the first part "The right of fair use not only helps exercise the freedom of expression, but is essential in developing communication and critical thinking skills required for our future generations to be successful in the 21st century." However, as I understand it, many people are working on revamping the laws/concepts of fair use to accommodate today's digital era.