With the world
exploding onto the web, copyright laws have become even more so the tangled
mess we all try to avoid. With Flikr pictures, YouTube Videos, illegal music
downloading, and virtually anything you want to put into a presentation at the
click of a button. But how do you know you’re allowed to use material? Even if
it’s simply for a classroom, and not for personal use (for example, showing
clips of films), many laws impede your use. To know what is allowed, research
is essential. And it’s always better to learn on your own time, rather than for
a court case.
The Copyright Act
of 1976 is still the existing copyright law in the United States, and the
framework for most developed countries’ own copyright laws. However, as the law
was “designed to reflect the technologies in use in 1976, the act is a catalyst
for friction between the law as it was designed and its applicability to
technologies that have revolutionized communications and the distribution of
information, tools, and entertainment,” (ECAR, pg. 2). Simply put, under
copyright law, the United States protects original work in a “tangible medium.”
Tangible media is defined as anything from print and paper to Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML). The idea of “original,” however is hardly defined. Copyright
laws last for different amounts of times. Privileges for a single author is
their life plus seventy years, whereas it is ninety-five years for a corporate
rights holder.
In 1998, The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was amended to the existing Copyright
Act. 22 years after the original law, “it is an attempt by lawmakers to update
copyright law to comport with new technologies, including digitization and data
networking in particular. It consists of two main parts: a procedural section
devoted to outlining the process whereby content owners can notify Internet
Service Providers about an alleged infringer, and a substantive section that
makes the breaking of encryption codes a violation of copyright law.”
Basically, if something is stolen of yours, you have the right to inform and
remove, and those caught breaking encryption codes get in big trouble.
When it comes to
education, the adjective open has
been used to indicate freedom under copyright laws. It grants user permission
to engage in what David Wiley in his article “Open the Future” calls the “4R”
activities: reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. To reuse is “the right to
reuse the content in its unaltered/verbatim form (e.g., make a backup copy of
the content). To revise is “the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the
content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language. To remix is “the
right to combine the original or revised content with something new (e.g.,
incorporate the content into a mashup). And lastly, to redistribute is “the
right to share copies of the original content, the revisions, or the remixes
with others (e.g., give a friend a copy of the content to a friend),” (Wiley,
pg. 16).
Knowing what I can
and cannot use in the classroom (or is illegal to anyhow), is very important.
As an English content area teacher, I will be constantly showing works of authors
that are copyrighted. Knowing that I can copy Hamlet in its entirety whereas I can show, by law, 30 seconds of
each movie made from that play (unless I want to buy them all, which as a
teacher, is nigh impossible). Even without the burden of being a teacher, the
pressures of copyright law in digital media is important to know, as we are all
“online.”
In Pamela Coke’s
class, E401 (Teaching Reading), we were required to create a documentary. As
such, putting any sort of music, pictures, clips, etc. into the documentary had
to be carefully done, as the film was to be put onto YouTube. The documentary
project is something that I would like to do with my own students at some
point, therefore knowing the copyright laws is non-negotiable.
