Fair Use- Fact and Fiction

To be 100% honest with you, until I began my masters program in media and instructional technology I had NO CLUE what fair use was or if I was breaking any copyright laws and I have been teaching for 11 years! I knew that it was not legal to copy a movie I rented from blockbuster and then there was the whole Napster thing. With the help of my instructors and some very insightful discussions with my school's media specialist, I now know that there are quite a few copyright laws that pertain to teachers and there is something called "fair use."

So what exactly is fair use? Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances- especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant (AUSOC , 1).Fair use is flexible and was meant to be used as a guideline not a law. Fair use was meant to be used and can be modified or changed to keep up with changing technology or to better meet the needs of its users. Copyright law does not state how fair use it to be applied exactly which helps to give it its flexibility and to work with its users.

When something is challenged and comes before the courts, most judges have four considerations that help them to determine if the work falls under "fair use":
1) the nature of the use
2) the nature of the work used
3) the extent of the use
4) its economic effect
(AUSOC, 6)

I chose to focus on: fair use is too unclear and complicated for me; it's better left to lawyers and administrators.
Who knows what resources are needed to educate better than the educators? Educators should be aware of what their rights are because they help to shape their own guidelines on fair use. Educators should be very vocal and share what they know with their faculty, media specialist, IT, and administrators. The more people are aware of these rights the more they will become put into practice. Who would you rather help to decide what good fair use practices are a politician that knows nothing about what is needed to teach your curriculum or teachers that are immersed in it every day. By not knowing and using those fair use guidelines you are allowing your students educational environment to be stifled.

Our county no longer has a policy & procedure manual that they post. Instead each school is encouraged to create their own or use one handed down from the state or previous media specialist. As I interviewed my media specialist about copyright, it was astonishing as to how little I actually knew. I began to think back on all the things I had done in the past and wondered why I wasn't sitting under the jail. She stated that she did post "fair use" around copy machines but that copyright was something that was very hard for her to enforce and at times was not a battle that she really wanted to fight. Instead of putting our heads in the sand or turning the other way, I think that it is necessary for those who know to share. We are in the business of teaching so why should that be limited to students? One way that this might be accomplished would be to have a copyright staff development at the beginning of the school year. This would help remind teachers how fair use was intended to be used and it would also inform those that were unaware of it purposes.

Resources
AUSOC. Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.http://mediaeducationlab.com/code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education-0