Copyrights and Copywrongs... a Reflection

The Digital Citizenship class that I'm taking through Lamar is the course I was most interested in taking from the very beginning of my instructional educational leadership journey. As I looked at the upcoming course work, I knew that this week was going to be a true experience in cognitive dissonance as we learn about Copyright laws, plagiarism, fair use, and open source rules and issues. I knew that this is something that I was uneducated about and realized that I could not claim ignorance anymore. As a teacher, it can be confusing on what is fair to use in the classroom setting and now, as classes are digital and material is posted on a learning management system, it's imperative that teachers set good examples and follow the rules that we enforce in class.

One concept that was completely new to me was the fact that you did not have to participate in any process to have original work copyrighted. I always figured that you had to apply and fill out paperwork to copyright like a patent on a new invention. According to the Copyright Basics from the Brigham Young University Library, "Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time". But a copyright notice requires paperwork to be filed with the Library of Congress.

I knew the copyright rules were different for classroom uses, but it wasn't until I read about the TEACH Act (The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act) which was passed in 2002, that I became aware in the differences in the use of work in a classroom setting. Copyright rules in education had already been addressed in the law, but lacked clarity for digital learning environments that need the same access to content as face-to-face classes. But after reading Section 110 of the Copyright Law of the United States, I am still pretty confused about what is and isn't a violation of copyright law in the classroom. There is some stuff that's obvious... don't photocopy the textbook and pass the copies around, don't play a Hollywood movie that has no basis in the context of the course, and obviously don't do any of those with commercial gain (I think that would be a whole other issue as well). But there are other ideas that I'm not quite sure about. I have vocabulary cards in which I found images on Google that represented those concepts. I printed them out and posted them around the room. Is that a copyright violation? And if so, is my teaching license in jeopardy? Is it a fine? Jail time? The problem with copyright laws is that they are not written in layman terms. I need a simple "okay" and "not okay" with examples (and possible pictures) copyright law list. I'm also taking graduate economics classes as well, and every required reading is a PDF with a Copyright stamp at the top that reads "Property of..." "do not replicate". Without these large declarative statements, I might not think to much of it and think to myself "what a great article, I need to share this in my class". It wasn't until I read these warnings that I though to myself, "What can I share as an educator? And what is a violation of copyright law?". How many resources out there are out of limits?

Now that I'm questioning every article and resource that I've shared in my class, I'm a little scared with the example that I've been setting as an educator but also as a student in instructional technology.

Resources:

What Does TEACH Say? | LSU Libraries. (2020, December 01). Retrieved from https://lib.lsu.edu/content/what-does-teach-say