The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy.

International Journal of Learning and Media, 2009

2012

College & Undergraduate Libraries, 2016

Undergraduate students have a limited knowledge of copyright basics. In order to fill this knowledge gap, I seek to engage undergraduates by providing them with an understanding of the ethics around copyright law, of their rights over their own contributions to their scholarly communities, of the availability of Creative Commons-licensed materials, and of how to exercise their fair use rights. Basic knowledge of these concepts is not only an integral part of understanding and engaging with information, but it also has the potential to motivate informed attitudes and behaviors around copyright. With this in mind, I designed an undergraduate class on copyright and fair use fundamentals that can be incorporated into any introductory college or university library instruction course or can be treated as a stand-alone session. Who cares about copyright? Who cares enough about copyright to educate themselves and develop informed practices? Scholars. Artists. Why? Because scholars and artists are acutely aware of contributing creative material to a larger body of work. On one hand, they are protective of their rights over their own creative work; on the other, they want to share their work with the world. Awareness of their own contributions makes them aware of the rights of others. Undergraduate students are members of the academic community. As educators, we prepare them to contribute to scholarship. The moment that students understand their place in the community is the moment that they begin to care about copyright, and the moment that they care is the moment that they want to become more informed. It is also the moment that they begin to develop communities of informed practice, and those communities of practice will extend beyond graduation, no matter what career paths those students take. The Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education supports student engagement and empowerment by emphasizing "student participation and creativity, highlighting the importance of these contributions" (2016). Focus groups that I conducted in 2015 support the hypothesis that students' knowledge of copyright law is often limited and that there exists an attitude of apathy toward copyright law. Apathy around the topic might stem from a pervasive culture of media sharing. The Framework notes that "[t]he novice learner may struggle to understand the diverse values of information in an environment where 'free' information and related services are plentiful" (ACRL 2016). There are two separate but conflated issues here: Not only do students have limited knowledge about copyright, but they also feel that it is not important to know about copyright. Assessment Although I don't employ a formal assessment, I have gathered some evidence of success and room for improvement from approximately 120 take-home assignments. The students' definitions, while not always eloquent, consistently show an understanding of the concepts, with few exceptions. Here are some samples of students' definitions (I maintained the students' errors): Plagiarism: Taking someone's work and using as your own.

There is an alarming lack of awareness of both copyright law and fair use guidelines in educational setting. Students at advanced stages of secondary education frequently do not make the connection between plagiarism and abuse of copy rights, and public schools do not appear to be actively promoting copyright compliance by students or teachers. Fair use guidelines are also not readily understood by licensed educators and seldom known by students. Multiple issues fuel the breaking of copyright compliance: (1) lack of funding to purchase materials, (2) lack of understanding of the economic benefits of copyright, and (3) lack of awareness of the fair use guidelines. Although fair use guidelines are provided for educators and students there still remain the unresolved issues of protection of intellectual properties of teachers and students as well as availability free, quality resources to promote educational reform.

Citeseer

Copyright infringement is one of the most talked about, yet most misunderstood topics in the curriculum and instructional development areas. The field of copyright protection is fraught with gray areas that undermine an individual's honest ability to discern what might be lawful uses of copyrighted materials. This article begins with a brief history of copyright law in the US and provides examples, references, and discussion of “fair use.” Additionally, issues related to the Internet are addressed, including: Web Linking, Framing ...

2020

Understanding copyright and fair use can be confusing, and as we integrate more technology into our schools, it can be overwhelming to determine what you can and cannot do using information and media you find. In order for us to become ethical consumers and creators of media, we need a strong understanding of the concepts of copyright and fair use.

2009

The 1976 Act, now more than 30 years old, is the current law of the land with regard to copyright. The act gives remarkably broad protection to authors, requiring only that a creative work be fixed in a "tangible means of expression," such as a tape, disc, hard drive, or piece of paper. This means that copyright protection is sweeping, potentially covering artifacts as quotidian as e-mails, laundry lists, and love notes. Online, such activities as downloading a Web page for later reference or posting a video made while the television plays in the background, may constitute violations of copyright. Since the act was passed, the digital age has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between original works and their copies that held with the analog duplication processes of the former era (Exhibit 1). This transformation has created a host of legal, ethical, and social circumstances that the 1976 law could not anticipate. In this article, we explore how the technological, social, cultural, and legal developments of the digital age challenge educators and students who seek to make use of copyrighted material for educational purposes and offer educators strategies for dealing with today's copyright challenges. We conclude with a call to revise the copyright law and suggest the direction that a revised copyright law should take to support responsible, creative use of both traditional and new media content, both within and beyond the physical walls of the classroom. Copyright and Today's Students Digital transmission transforms the act of copying in two ways. First, digital technology enables mass copying; e-mail and Internet technologies allow users to send high-quality copies of graphical, visual, or musical materials to a huge number of recipients. Second, generation loss disappears (Nakano and Nakamura 1997); that is, each copy is precisely the same as any other copy. Indeed, if the work in question begins in the digital realm (as is the case with today's digital audio recorders, camcorders, and cameras), not only does every copy exactly resemble every other copy, but each copy is also precisely similar to the original. In this context, the essential difference between the original and a copy-the raison d'être for copyright law-becomes nothing more than a legal fiction. Educators struggle with these changes on the front lines as they are confronted with the task of educating young people about the boundaries of a copyright law that, when read conservatively, prohibits virtually all of the casual copying and remixing in which students often engage. According to Lenhart and Madden (2005), today's content creators are mostly young people who generate material for a wider Internet audience, branching outside of traditional educational venues to disseminate their content on personal Web sites, blogs, and various other kinds of sites, such as chat rooms and social networking sites. In doing this, they borrow

2008

These days, it's inevitable: writing and composition teachers are becoming media literacy teachers. As the Internet and computing technologies have created new forms of expression and communication that are multivocal, multimodal, collaborative, public, instantaneously accessible, and sometimes anonymously authored, anyone in the business of helping students develop the capacity for self-expression and communication bumps into key concepts of media literacy education. As Brian Morrison (qtd.