New guidelines for Fair Use
Dealing with copyright questions is my least favorite thing about the job I do.
As a middle school librarian, I used to put on a witch hat when I had to talk about copyright with my faculty. I would try to explain the complicated topic of fair use, then tell them that if they would follow these guidelines I wouldn’t have to wear the witch hat anymore (which I didn’t like anyway because it messed up my hair).
Then the Internet came along and made it so easy to “borrow” pictures, video, audio and other media. Teachers and librarians who are just trying to come up with something to engage and interest students don’t understand why they can’t use these things to teach their kids and are so afraid of doing something wrong, that they just eschew using media all together.
Now we don’t have to be afraid anymore.
Last week the Center for Social Media introduced their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. These guidelines were written by educators for educators and meant to help teachers “using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use.”
From their website:
The guide outlines five principals, each with limitations.
Educators can, under some circumstances:
1. Make copies of newspaper articles, TV shows, and other copyrighted works. and use them and keep them for educational use.
2. Create curriculum materials and scholarship with copyrighted materials embedded.
3. Share, sell and distribute curriculum materials with copyrighted materials embedded.
Learners can, under some circumstances:
4. Use copyrighted works in creating new material
5. Distribute their works digitally if they meet the transformativeness standard.
This video gives a quick explanation:
This is something that we all need to study and understand. You can download the full document here.
