How do I Do Copyright Right?

So if you are one of many teachers that have their own website, and you have read all my posts about copy right laws, violations, and fines, I thought I'd give some hints about how to make sure you rectify any obvious violations.  Remember, ignorance won't get you out of that $1,000 fine and YOU are responsible for it, not your school.  Here's a screen recording detailing what I did when I suspected I might be using copyrighted pictures.

In case you don't get a response from your request, you can get more information by going to Requesting Permission from the Copyright Advisory Office.  Good luck!

Student Copyright Issues, tsk tsk.

Getting students to not plagiarize is even harder to do than ever!

The internet has opened up a world of answers that students can so easily copy and claim as their own.  But it's the job of the English department to lecture against plagiarism, right?  WRONG.  We are all responsible for making sure that we emphasize good practices when students do research and compile answers to turn in for credit.

I try to educate students by telling them that they are allowed, just as teachers are, to do a presentation in which they use images and documents to make their point to the class. This is an acceptable defense that teachers may use in copyright court called Fair Use (see my previous blog for a summary or http://www.fairuse.org/.

Students work is their own intellectual property as soon as it is recorded in any means.  But once they publish plagiarized work on the open internet, copy text without using quotation marks, or fail to reference the original owner of the material, they may be exposing themselves to legal or school penalties.  Working with them and forcing them to get it right will reinforce what their English teacher tells them and keep them from getting in major trouble in college.

Have your students take this quiz to see what they know about copyright laws. See what you know too!

Here's a video I give to my students to help them write a reference section for their online sources.

Are You Playing Fair?

I wasn't concerned about copyright infringement until I got an email from my administration that stated that if I didn't remove a photo from my class website, they or I would be fined. My department head received a similar email about his website. We were a little clueless I have to say. And we were very lucky that we were given the courtesy of being allowed to rectify the situation.

I am not a lawyer, but I think I have a pretty good grasp on copy right law for teachers now.  You'll be happy to know that under the copyright law the Fair Use Clause 107 states that educators and students can show and reproduce copyrighted materials for educational purposes.  All  government sites or work that government employees create while doing government work and materials older than 1923 are completely fair game to photocopy and distribute even if you are not a teacher. You are permitted to show movies (if you don't reproduce a copy), hand out articles, passages of books, and play music recordings. It doesn't matter if you or your school owns the movie, or you use your personal Netflix account, as long as you don't charge admission.  And if you have any indication that a website owner might not want you to photocopy parts of their site, you are allowed to just direct students to the site on their own.

Where you would run into trouble is using images that are copyrighted, then posting them to the open internet like I did.  If you have a pass worded student site you are fine.  It's the dissemination on the open internet that will cause you trouble. And it makes sense that photocopying and distributing texts, including single chapters, or workbooks that students are supposed to purchase for your class is illegal because you are taking money away from the copy right holder.  Internet homework sites make it very easy to distribute these materials illegally. You may not use copyrighted material for profit or plagiarize (claiming work as your own) which is more of a problem for our students.

Here is a government site if you want to read more about Fair Use.

If you happen to have a blog where you include images found on the internet, you may want to read this article about the outrageous fines imposed by companies or individuals who run image search programs 24 hours a day.  These can be from $200 to $150,000.  Scary!

Who Owns Creative Thoughts?

In education, intellectual property pertains to the ideas and lessons that a teacher has created.  When you dedicate hours of your time after school thinking of creative ways to engage your students, then post assignments online for them, do you want other teachers to use your hard work freely?

The debate about Intellectual property seems to be popping up more and more due to technology making it easier to infringe upon other teachers work.  Sharing, copying, and editing can be done and sent across the world within seconds.  Before technology, teachers made hard copies of their work and may choose to give their colleague a copy but it probably didn't go much further than that.  Now when you share work with someone via a computer, they can send it to anyone or everyone they know.  When you post on a class website, all their parents have access to your work as well.  On my school class website, the whole world has access to my ideas.  Personally, I am willing to share, but not everyone feels that way

In New Zealand, Starkey, Corbett, Bondy, and Davidson (2010) found that 51% of teacher participants had not even heard of intellectual property. And some didn't know that it applies to work that hasn't been published. Here's a link to a National Education Association (NEA) article that explains intellectual property and fair use (for teachers to use articles and images in their classroom.) Check out KD Reeves' blog about teachers' intellectual property rights.

Do you have any copy right infringement stories? Please share them here.

My Intellectual Property Can be Yours for a Price

All that hard work you do to make lesson plans, are they your own? 

Although work that you do at your job should belong to your company, most schools wouldn't enforce copyright law over your work, especially since a lot of teachers to their lesson planning on their own time at home on their own computer. If your boss specifically asks you to develop a lesson plan to share with your department or district then it is the property of the school and they can share it.    If you're paid to write a curriculum then that curriculum is the property of whoever paid you. But in general if the lesson plan is yours even if you haven't submitted a copyright registration, so it is yours to sell if you wish.

Click here for a copyright registration for your lessons if you wish to do so. It's not cheap. Remember these lessons are yours anyway but if you want to sue someone for taking your lessons you would probably need to be registered first so you have proof.

The latest trend is for some teachers is to go to an online lesson plan selling sites and sell their hard work. This has created some controversy in education because in the spirit of being a teacher you should be willing to share your ideas for free in order to further our profession.  I can see both sides, I wouldn't charge for my lesson plans but if a teacher is exceptionally creative and specifically uses their free time to design excellent lesson plans, I think they should be able to sell them without criticism.  This also helps our profession because there are some uncreative teachers out there who really want to do better but just don't know how. The cost is minimal compared to the benefit as most lesson plans are about $3 to $9 but some are actually on there for free. Check out Teachers Pay Teachers here.

Are you willing to share some or all of your work? Do you feel like you use a lot of other people's work? I welcome your comments.