Genius Blog

Copyright and Why You Should Care

What is copyright and why should you care?

Read below for my comprehension on what Copyright is and why it is imperative to teach to your students the fundamentals of copyright law.

Original, tangible work is protected by copyright laws in North America and many other countries. Copyright notices are not required, the simple act of creating the work enables the copyright which ensures that only the author of the original work has the right to use it and all others must obtain permission.

What does this mean for teachers? This means that teachers may not show a video in class without acquiring public performance rights. In order to use the video, a teacher must have a CC (Creative Common license that allows distribution). A standard Youtube license will not suffice.

Teachers must also know that distribution or the use of copied documents in class is not allowed. This can only be done if payment is made to the copyright owners (often done through Copibec).

There is a need for access to open educational resources for educators and students to readily make available and share digital media on the Internet. Creative Commons was founded by the Center for the Public Domain, in order to address the need for copyright licenses that promote open sharing of creative work.

Creative Commons set out six licenses that allow authors to declare how their creations or products can be used. Below you can find four types of copyright. Some of these types can be combined to form six:

Attrition: Letting others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work, and derivative works based upon it, but only if they give credit the way that the creator requests.

Share Alike: The creator allows others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the creators’ work.

Non-Commercial: The creator allows others to copy, distribute, display, and perform their work as well as derivative works based upon it. It can only be used for non-commercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works: The creator allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of his/her work, not derivative works based upon it.

How to Teach Students About Copyright

It is very important to teach students about copyright laws because the availability of digital tools to students at home and at school means that they are able to take media from the Internet on a daily basis with the purpose of uploading and sharing. This would then infringe on copyright laws. Students must learn what basic copyright law means. Copyright law means that all rights are reserved (copying, distributing, performing, displaying, or adapting of digital media found online are prohibited).

The best way to demonstrate to students the importance of following copyright is to encourage them to make their own images and apply Creative Commons license, and if they must use other images, they must use images with Creative Commons license or a clear identifiable license.

With this being said, students will have to learn how to create their own graphics and be shown how to search the Internet for images with the proper license (attribution or no conditions only). Students would also benefit from learning to create their own music using online tools and programs such as Soundcloud or GarageBand.

Students w also benefit from learning how to properly use an image created by someone else, and how to locate creators who provide Creative Commons licenses on their products. Students should also learn how to determine if a video clip or image can be legally used. Proper use of citation of sources and copyright, should be an essential part of every assignment, especially when students are incorporating digital media.

A works cited page is also a great way for teachers to encourage students to collect information and to organize those sources in an effective manner.

Cheers until next week!

Ashley