Copyright Clarity

How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning

                In Renee Hobbs’ book Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning we learn that there is a lot of misinformation in schools when it comes to copyright law. Hobbs describes three types of understanding of copyright laws by educators;

See No Evil - teachers who believe they can use any material for any purpose, ignorance (of copyright law) is bliss.

Close the door – when teachers & students are discouraged from sharing their work outside of the school building.

Hyper-comply – when teachers are fearful of copyright law and far more restrictive than the actual law states.

This misunderstanding of the copyright law by educators hinders the quality of materials produced by teachers and students.

            Hobbs expands on two points to clarify the confusion over copyright law. First, most people believe that copyright law is there solely to protect the owners’ rights for profit and control. When in reality the U.S. Constitutions says that promoting the spread of knowledge and innovation are the purpose of copyright. This provision of intellectual property rights was included in our Constitution because our Founders believed that a free society would benefit from encouraging the development of new ideas and information. Second is the power of fair use. Fair use of a copyright is not an infringement of copyright, but there are certain factors involved when determining fair use;

•                     The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purpose;

•                     the nature of the copyrighted work;

•                     the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

•                     the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

All this to say that each individual case is going to be different and a blanket statement won’t cover it, fair use requires reasoning and judgement. Hobb says it best here: “It is designed to ensure that the concept of fair use is responsive to the wide variety of contexts in which people use other people’s copyrighted work in the development of their own work.”

            Another helpful point Hobbs makes is understanding transformative use. If a copyrighted material is used in a transformative way, taking a film clip, or music clip, art, whatever and transforming it’s intended use, in our case as educators using it in a lesson and not using it how the creators intended to use it, we are using it in a way that fair use intended, including different concepts of audience, meaning and interpretation. This is not to say we can use a checklist and think we are not infringing upon a copyright, but that with understanding fair use and transfromativeness in our educator roles we can better determine how to use copyrighted materials.

            I think ‘Copyright Clarity’ is a book every educator should read. It does clarify the confusion over copyright law and gives me as an educator a confidence in interpreting copyright law. I think that confidence will impact my practice by allowing me to more confidently use reason and judgement when using copyrighted material to help the society around me (my school) by encouraging the development of new ideas and information. I also see a whole lesson on clarifying copyright law for my students in high-school. Copyright law is a benefit to creators and users and we should be appreciative of a law that actually not only protects our intellectual properties but also encourages sharing of information and ideas to benefit the society as a whole.