asaris

Can anybody give me a quick summary of copyright law as it relates to the use of materials in the classroom. Or, more likely, let me know good web sources?

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

FleaCircus

I'm not a lawyer, so don't rely entirely on what I've got to say, but here goes:

Using small portions of a work (a few pages from a novel, paragraphs from a short story, etc.) of a copyrighted work for classroom educational purposes should fall under the concept of "fair use," which means that you don't have to obtain permission from the copyright holder.

However, using large amounts of a single copyrighted work, or, in the case of smaller works such as a particular poem from an anthology, the entire work, is not covered by "fair use."

Keep in mind, though, that for many older works, the work itself might be in the public domain, even if the particular edition of it is not. For cases like this, such as Shakespeare, the way the work is presented (typeface, layout, pagination, etc.) is covered by copyright, even if the words themselves are not.

There's a lot of vagueness in the law, though, so there's room for all kinds of interpretation.

Here are some links that might help:
Fair Use Link
Public Domain Link

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asaris

Thanks

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

losthellhound

If you need more assistance can you be more specific? What are you using and for what? There is a difference between print, video, and what they are being used for

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"Life is possible only with illusions. And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"
-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

Fenton-J-Cool

Photocopying money so your grade three students can learn counting with money = BAD

Lesson learned by my friend, the teacher's assistant.

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wra

asaris

Well, I was giving a presentation on Copyright Law for my class on using multimedia in the classroom. But that was this afternoon. Incidentally, these were the sources I ended up using, just in case anyone else is interested:

http://www.benedict.com
http://teachvu.vu.msu.edu/public/pedagogy
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellec...y/cprtindx.htm

And another source that might be of interest:

http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Sect...tID=25939#newc

The last one describes the "TEACH" act, which is fairly recent, and a bit more specific about how educators can use copyrighted materials.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

cowudders14

Please remember that copyright law is different per country - the UK has just updated it's cpoyright laws and made a whole load more shit illegal - be careful which countries you use and which countries law you need to reference.

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