Copyright for K-12 Educators
Professor Sara R. Benson, J.D., LLM, MSLIS
AP News Headline:
Texas school district ordered to pay $9.2M in copyright suit
May 25, 2019
Dynastudy, Inc. v. Houston ISD
Houston teachers willfully copied and distributed Dynastudy’s student course notes.
There was evidence of teachers removing the copyright notice from the study guides and putting them on the internet for anyone to download.
What can you do?
Exactly what you are here to do today!
Learn more about copyright and how to handle licensing issues appropriately to avoid such an awful situation!
Let’s start at the beginning…
By a show of hands, how many of you own a copyright?
Trick question…
IT IS REALLY EASY TO GET A ©
originality
fixation
copyright
Exclusive Rights of the Author
While © protection is automatic…
Using a copyright notice
© 2021 by Sara R. Benson
Does serve a purpose…
It puts others on notice! Lots of folks are confused about copyright law.
And…
You can’t sue anyone in court until you’ve registered your copyright with the US Copyright Office
But, since copyright protection is so long
There are many ways to poke holes in it and there are some special exceptions for educators as well.
public domain
cc licenses
© exceptions
fair use
asking for permission
Published in the United States
pre-1926
🅑🅔🅒🅐🅤🅢🅔 🅜🅐🅣🅗
1925
+95
2020
Face-to-Face Teaching
(not copy)
(not public performance)
Disney nightmare
PTA fined for showing “The Lion King” without public performance rights for a fundraiser after school.
And so, we finally reach . . .
FAIR USE
A few notes first
Fair use always includes a risk assessment
Not everything that is educational is a fair use
Fair use requires a case-by-case analysis
And… most importantly
Fair Use
(2)
Nature of the Work
(3)
Amount Used
(4)
Potential Effect on the Market Value
(1)
Purpose & Character
Commercial
Educational
Purpose & Character of the Use
Highly Creative
Factual/Historical
Nature of the Underlying Work
Entire Work
Small Amount
Amount Taken
Replaces Market Value
Different Market/No Market Impact
Effect on Potential Market Value
𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓷𝓼𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓶𝓪𝓽𝓲𝓿𝓮 𝓾𝓼𝓮
A transformative use is one that alters the original work "with new expression, meaning or message . . .." Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, 510 U.S. 569, 579 (1994).
transformative
Transformative Use Example
Advertise Concerts
Historical Context
In teaching…
Often our use of images in power-point slides could be considered transformative fair use…
Why?
Do we even need to get to fair use for slides?
What about worksheets/textbooks?
Often, sadly, copying even a small amount of a textbook is not a fair use.
Why not?
To demonstrate good faith
Use a fair use checklist to show how you determined your use of that image/chapter/page was a fair use
Try this checklist
You can e-mail me at: srbenson@Illinois.edu
Please check out my Library Guide:
https://go.illinois.edu/
CopyrightReferenceGuide
Attribution: Slide 6 image: : Colorful Hands, CC-BY-SA, http://blog.intef.es/cniie/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2014/11/hands_colorful.1png
Questions?
Also, feel free to check out my newest book:
Compact Copyright: Quick Answers to Common Questions