Reflection 3

Digital Citizenship Week 3 Reflection

            In week three of this course the laws of copyright come to the forefront.  When I saw this portion of this course, I didn’t think much about it.  I assumed that I knew what I needed to know about copyright and the laws surrounding it.  Well I was wrong.  After viewing and reading an endless amount of information on copyright laws, I have come to the conclusion that I know nothing about this topic.

            As a history teacher I have spent a lot of time looking into early American History.  In my studies I have never seen anything about copyright laws being an important topic of discussion.  That or I didn’t care to pay any attention to copyright laws.  I think that is how many Americans would react to copyright laws.  Though the facts remain that early on in American history copyright was on the finds of the founding fathers. So much so that George Washington made it known in his State of the Union Address.  With the constitution in hand, copyright laws were created.

            Over the years the copyright department has taken some hits due to budget cuts.  With the changing times with technology, the current system seems to not be ready for 21st century copyright issues.  This is why the Hudson Institute has come up with three proposal for change.

  1. The copyright office should be given more authority to restricts its own office.
  2. The copyright office should become a stand-alone structure.
  3. The copyright office should move to the Department of Commerce.

All three of these can happen but it won’t be without creating any government issues.

            There are wide range of educational settings that teachers are apt to use copyrighted materials for.  So, the questions really are can they use it.  This is where the idea of Fair Use comes into play.  Fair Use allows use of copyrighted materials without permission of the copyright holder for certain purposes.  When looking at the use of Fair Use, there are four factors to take into account.

  1. The purpose – is it to be used for commercial or nonprofit educational purposes.
  2. The Nature of the copyrighted work
  3. The amount that is going to be used from the copyrighted work.
  4. The Market effect – The value of the copyrighted work.

In the face-to-face classroom teachers will need to consider the fair use when reproducing materials.  Even if teachers are getting materials from a website that doesn’t say it is copyrighted, the safe bet is to assume all materials are copyrighted unless posted.  One of the sticky spots of fair use is legality of purchase.  Over and over again I saw that fair use can be taken as long as materials were acquired legally.

            Another area that I didn’t know about is the different levels granted by copyright owners.  Copyright holders may allow people to make copies but limit other forms such as distributing materials electronically. Permission is granted exclusively or nonexclusive in many cases.  As I read through the number of different types of copyrighted levels, I became more and more confused.  This has opened my eyes that teaching about copyright is an important part of digital citizenship.  As digital citizenship, copyright laws are important for 21st century students to understand if they are going to be successful in the technological world that we live in.

Resources

Tepp, S., & Oman, R. (2015). A 21st Century Copyright Office: The Conservative Case for Reform. Hudson Institute. Retrieved from https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet01-          xythos.s3.amazonaws.com/5c082f78d4ba4/2595237?response-cache-control=private,   max-age=21600&response-content-disposition=inline; filename*=UTF-8”Hudson         Institute_White Paper(2).pdf&response-content-type=application/pdf&X-Amz-           Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200903T180000Z&X-Amz-        SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz- Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PL5SJBSTP6/20200903/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-            Signature=4fd018870d65eda7e9c21d3e1492dcd8cd4acdc652da4c5164935633e7088f45

Hoon, P. H. (2007). USING COPYRIGHTED WORKS IN YOUR TEACHING.Retrieved from http://www.knowyourcopyrights.org/storage/documents/kycrfaq.pdf

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