FAIR USE IN LIBRARY MEDIA- WHAT’S THE SITUATION?

Neiketa Johnson

What is Fair Use?

“Fair use is a defense to an allegation of infringement under the U.S. copyright law that excuses otherwise infringing limited use of portions of a copyrighted work without the copyright owner’s permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research."  In an increasingly copyrighted world, educators must be able to navigate the fair use policy to teach children. Also educators must teach children how to manipulate fair use policies in and out of our classrooms. The Fair Use law provides copyright protection to creative works in an effort to protect owners’ rights while allowing borrowers' usage for educational purposes. The owners and borrowers of culturally creative material must be able to meet at the bargaining table to foster flexibility of sharing copyrighted material. Some believe, society gives limited property rights to creators to produce culture while allowing other creators to use that same material without permission or payment. Without both sides our society may suffer at the hands of copyright laws and fair use policies. The question remains: how can we meet in the middle of the road and allow both sides to agree about the sharing of material?

A major concern is the unlicensed fair use of copyrighted materials for education, not the way those materials were acquired. Owners of copyrighted material desire the right to give permission for using their material. Another issue with fair use of material is whether or not the unlicensed use transforms the material from its original use to a different purpose than that of the original or did it just repeat the work for the same value as the original? Courts will consider this fair use because the borrower is recreating the copyrighted work. Although most Fair Use cases do not enter into a courtroom, educators who borrow others’ works should be made aware of potential infringement. The bottom line; if you borrow someone’s copyrighted work use it “fairly”. Fair use has a wide range of meanings depending on who you ask. There are no black or white rules for determining whether a particular activity may be considered a permissible fair use.

Destroying the Myths

MYTH: EDUCATORS CAN RELY ON “RULES OF THUMB” FOR FAIR USE GUIDANCE.

The truth is that there are no specific set of rules that govern if you are abiding by Fair Use policies. There is no specific amount of material quoted, video shared, or number of music lines borrowed that indicate you are abiding by Fair use policies. Fair use is situational, and context is critical. Because it is a tool to balance the rights of users with the rights of owners, educators need to apply reason to govern actions. In my school district the Copyright Laws are posted in the media center to make patrons aware of the law and not for the media specialist to enforce. Our district purchases downloadable items and place items on the hard drive of our county-owned laptops for educational purposes. The licenses for such items are given to the county and teachers and staff  have access to use these items. Some licensed software is only accessible via the county’s network and not available for home use. Perhaps this is one way of avoiding copyright infringement. The goal in our district is to provide  the resources to support the academic curriculum. Managing copyright laws is not top on the priority list, although educators and students are made aware of these laws and policies.

Check out this link for rules governing copyright rule enforcement at Immaculata University, Immaculata, PA. There have a very strict bottom line policy in which fees are charged for piracy and unlawful distribution of copyright material.

http://www.immaculata.edu/sites/default/files/file/Administration/policies/Immaculata-%20File-Sharing%20Policy%20and%20QA.pdf

Reference:

Code of best practices in fair use for media literacy eduation. (2012). Retrieved from http://mediaeducationlab.com/code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education-0 

The Bottom line on information technology use and, in particular, file-sharing at immaculata university. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.immaculata.edu/sites/default/files/file/Administration/policies/Immaculata-%20File-Sharing%20Policy%20and%20QA.pdf