Education World answers the question "What can my students and I freely use in our lessons, presentations, workshops, newsletters, reports, and Web sites, and what is protected by copyright?" Included: A tour of the public domain!
Have you ever ...
- incorporated an innovative online graph into a math teaching master?
- copied a video documentary to show during a classroom history lesson?
- created a science unit by combining a variety of text and online
resources?
- posted to your school Web site a class picture taken by School Photos
Inc.?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you're probably a terrific
teacher! You might also be a copyright scofflaw!
However altruistic your motives, the materials used in the above examples
are protected by copyright -- and copyright law states that the owner
of any tangible creative work has the sole right to reproduce,
distribute, perform, display, transmit, or transform that work. Therefore,
unless you had the permission of the copyright owner or owners, your use
of the materials constituted copyright infringement.
"But everybody does it!" you gasp.
"I've always done it!" you protest.
"No one ever said it was illegal!" you plead. "How can I be guilty of
anything?"
"People routinely get away with illegal copying in the classroom for
the same reason that people get away with speeding on the interstate,"
said John Adsit, online education coordinator for
Jefferson County Schools in Golden, Colorado. "There aren't enough
police watching them."
"Not long ago," Adsit recalled, "a teacher in our area was happily showing
a movie in class, using one of his department's many VHS movie copies.
It was a movie he and his colleagues had shown for years, with no second
thoughts. How was he to know that one of his students was the daughter
of the movie's producer?"
"The ensuing lawsuit was most instructive," Adsit added.
* All tangible creative works are protected by copyright
immediately upon creation.
* Quoting or crediting the author of a copied work
does not satisfy copyright requirements.
*When in doubt about either the copyright status
of a work or the appropriateness of your use of that work,
get permission. |
|
If you prefer to learn from someone else's "instructive" lawsuits rather
than your own, you probably need to know a little more about copyright law
than you do right now. Start with the basics.
Copyright, according to
Dictionary.com, is "the legal right granted to an author, a composer,
a playwright, a publisher, or a distributor to exclusive publication,
production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or
artistic work."
Copyright laws are based on the belief that anyone who creates an original,
tangible work deserves to be compensated for that work, that compensation
encourages more creative works, and that society as a whole benefits from
the creative efforts of its members. Copyright laws, therefore, are designed
to protect a creator's right to be compensated and to control how his
or her work is used.
U.S. copyright law, found in Title
17 of the
United States Code, establishes broad criteria for copyright protection.
According to the law, copyrightable work must be tangible.
A great joke told -- or a great song sung -- isn't protected
by copyright until it's written down or recorded.
Copyrightable work must also be creative.
Facts are not copyrightable -- although a clever collection
of facts might be. Ideas are not copyrightable -- although a particular
expression of an idea probably is.
Educators often ask the question "What can my students and I freely
use in our lessons, presentations, workshops, newsletters, reports, and
Web sites, and what is protected by copyright?"
The short answer is that nearly every original, tangible expression
is copyrighted immediately upon creation. An author does not have to register
the work, announce that the work is copyright protected, or display the
copyright symbol to enjoy copyright protection. All he or she must do
is create an original work in tangible form.
In fact, the list of works that are not copyright protected is surprisingly
short. According to the
U.S. Copyright Office, that list includes only
- works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression.
- titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs;
mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring;
mere listings of ingredients or contents.
- ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles,
discoveries, or devices -- as distinguished from a description, an explanation,
or an illustration.
- works consisting entirely of information that is common property
and contains no original authorship, such as standard calendars, height
and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken
from public documents or other common sources.
The only other tangible works that are not afforded copyright protection
are works in the public domain. Even that body of work is nowhere near
as extensive as is commonly believed. In the United States, for example,
the public domain includes
- works published before January 1, 1923.
- works published between 1923 and 1978 that did not contain a valid
copyright notice.
- works published between 1923 and 1978 for which the copyright was
not renewed.
- works authored by employees of the federal government.
- works that the copyright owner has freely granted to the public domain.
Because of the duration of copyright protection established in the 1976
revision of the U.S. Copyright Act, no works published after January 1,
1978, will pass into the public domain until at least 2048. Even anonymous
works are copyright protected until 95 years after publication!
For a quick look at when works published in the United States
pass into the public domain, see
When Works Pass Into the Public Domain, by Lolly Gasaway, at the University of North Carolina.
Most copyright experts recommend this rule of thumb -- when in doubt,
assume a work is copyrighted and ask permission to use it. Don't make
the common mistake of believing that including quotation marks or a line
of attribution satisfies copyright requirements. If you properly quote
and/or credit a work's author, experts say, you cannot be accused of plagiarism,
but you may still be accused of copyright infringement.
Click here to return to the main
page of the Education World copyright series.
Editor's Note: The information contained in this article
is, to the best of our knowledge, correct and up-to-date. Copyright laws
and the circumstances surrounding the use of copyrighted materials can
be difficult to interpret, however, and information in this article should
not be construed as legal advice.
Article by Linda Starr
Education World®
Copyright © 2004 Education World
Originally published 08/23/1999
Updated 11/17/2006
|
