I selected to do my Issue 4 assignment about Fair Use, as I found it more relevant to my job (in comparison to the interesting situation about the college professor's "Hoaxocaust" website). I have barely taken copyright laws into consideration when preparing materials for teaching my students. In the past, I have asked for certain books to be purchased so that I could use them in my lessons. However, if one copy of the book was purchased, I may have used multiple copies of its contents and if no copies had been purchased, that did not necessarily stop me from using the contents.
For most teachers, it all comes back to two things:
- Time - As the book discusses, teachers don't have the time to figure out what constitutes fair use and if payment should be made or permission should be obtained, how this is to be done. The situation is like the one in the book pertaining to the video of the KSU shootings.
- Teachable Moments - Most teachers would rather risk the unlikely punishment for copyright infringement in order to obtain those teachable moments.
The continuing developments in technology in recent years are certainly changing the scenario for "fair use." Last year, I had a student that had moved to America from China just days before starting in my classroom. He spoke very little English. His ESL (English as a Second Language) Tutor had copies of Rosetta Stone--a program that you probably often see advertised when watching late night television--for use in the library. Unfortunately, the student was often unable to participate in classes because of the language barrier, so his teachers wanted to find some way to help him, without taking instructional time away from the other students. I won't say what I did or did not do, but . . . Would it be (copy)right or (copy)wrong to copy the Rosetta Stone software CD so that it could be used in the student's classrooms?
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