Category: copyright

Using Copyrighted Materials in Education: Fair Use Guidelines for Educators

I’ve written about Fair Use before, but thought I’d bring up the topic again since the summer online courses are about to get under way.  Often, faculty wonder whether their use of copyrighted materials in the classroom constitutes Fair Use or not. Making a Fair Use argument is not always easy, especially when so many draconian interpretations of copyright law exist.  But Fair Use is part of copyright law, even though it is little understood (and poorly spelled out).  I hate to see faculty forgo valuable lesson plans for fear of using copyrighted material that’s essential to the curriculum.  But often they do, or they are “quiet” about the uses they make (particularly audio and video) for fear that they may be doing something wrong, when quite often they are not.

Three and a half years ago, the Association for Independent Film Makers got together and defined their own industry guidelines for Fair Use.  In the absence of case law regarding Fair Use, judges often look to common industry practices to determine whether a use of copyrighted work falls under the Fair Use doctrine or not (and such information is not always available or easy to find).  Having a written set of documented principles and guidelines is useful for both practitioners and courts in determining whether a use is fair or not.  

Finally, this past November, after a year of study and collaboration, educators released their own “Code of Best Practices for Fair Use in Media Literacy Education“. (Download the Code of Best Practices here.)

Below is a clip they’ve put together on the topic:

 
Here’s a short video on The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy from a talk given at American University’s Center for Social Media:

 

Following are the Five Principles in the code above, with Descriptions and Limitations:

ONE: EMPLOYING COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IN MEDIA LITERACY LESSONS

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New Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

The Center for Social Media has just released a document that helps educators who use media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright

picture-42.pngdoctrine of fair use. The document was created during 10 meetings with more than 150 members of leading educational associations across the United States, and follows in the footsteps of the Documentary Filmmakers Association who created guiding practices for their industry 3 years ago.

In the murky waters of what legally constitutes a fair use and what doesn’t, courts of law generally look to common industry practices. In the absence of such guiding documents, the courts must look to other other industries’ interpretations of fair use, or prior case law, which often themselves aren’t relevant or comparable. Interestingly, The Center for Social Media reports that they “don’t know of any lawsuit brought by an American media company against an educator over the use of media in the educational process”.

The Center defines Media Literacy in Education:

Media literacy is the capacity to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms. This expanded conceptualization of literacy responds to the demands of cultural participation in the twenty-first century. Like literacy in general, media literacy includes both receptive and productive dimensions, encompassing critical analysis and communication skills, particularly in relationship to mass media, popular culture, and digital media. Like literacy in general, media literacy is applied in a wide variety of contexts—when watching television or reading newspapers, for example, or when posting commentary to a blog. Indeed, media literacy is implicated everywhere one encounters information and entertainment content. And like literacy in general, media literacy can be taught and learned.

Head on over to their website and to read more and download the code.