Samantha Frye

Wolfe

February 21, 2019

Copyright and Fair Use

Being in colorguard in high school, we always had a designated photographer at all

performances. During marching season, the school had their own photographer, Mempics, come

in and would always take action shots of us on the field. They would then be uploaded onto their

website with their watermark pasted over the entire photo. During winterguard, our team could

designate one parent to sit in a specific area of the stands in the gyms and take all our

pictures/videos for us. I have several pictures saved onto my phone from my four years and half

of them have “Mempics” still watermarked on them because I did not know that just saving them

was frowned upon. That thought honestly never crossed my mind. All the pictures taken during

winterguard were taken by a parent that would download them on to a CD for us all and give

them to us at the end of the semester. I always knew the moms pretty well and she would just let

me go through them and send them to my phone directly so they’re clean.

Now that I work in an after-school program, we have a specific website that we can

upload pictures that we take of our kids during programming. In all their applications, their

parent/guardian has to initial a line that says they’re allowed to be photographed. I thought it was

more of a safety concern rather than a copyright legality. (Copyrights and Copying Wrong,

2010). I didn’t know that something as simple as taking a picture of a child doing a super cool

STEM project and loading it onto our own domain was infringing on copyright laws. We also

used to print a bunch of coloring pages for our kindergarteners. We would just look up “coloring

pages” and find one we like, copy and paste the image into a Word Document, then print it. We
wouldn’t go to free coloring pages websites or anything. We would straight steal it off Google

search results.

An online dictionary defined copyright as “the exclusive right to make copies, license,

and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.”.

With that being said, what me and my coworkers were doing is rather illegal and it is a good

thing we no longer do worksheets anymore. Everything we do is hands on. How can teachers

avoid this though? These copyright laws seem really easy to break, especially if you don’t know

what is illegal in the first place. This is where fair use comes into play. The same dictionary

defined fair use as “reasonable and limited use of copyrighted material so as not to infringe upon

copyright”. (Dictionary.com) When deciding what to use in the classroom, one of the most

important guidelines to follow would be to make sure what you’re using follows educational

means, and the amount you use (University of Chicago). In layman's terms, make sure the

material is relevant to what you’re teaching in the classroom. For instance, when covering a

novel in an english class, for a particular lesson only use the part of the book that directly relates

to the topic at hand, and nothing more. Maybe a paragraph or an excerpt from a chapter.

Things that are not copyrighted and are a free for all would be theories, procedures,

concepts/principles, slogans, and information that is common property without any original

authorships. Copyright extends throughout the entire author’s life, plus seventy years after their

passing. So basically, anything published before 1923 or was published by a government

employee is free for the public to use. (Educationworld, 2010).

When educators consider fair use, they think that it allows them to use what they want,

when they want, and however much they want. However, Fair Use laws dictate that the same

work cannot be used for more than one semester, more than nine times in one semester, class, or
course. (Educationworld, 2015). You can get hit with a copyright charge even if you don’t get hit

with a plagiarism charge.

It is absolutely wild to see just how uncommon these “common laws” are and how they

are misused and broken every single day. It really makes me second guess what materials to use

and how to use them in my future career. I never knew just how much legal consideration had to

go into program planning for each unit.

 Sources

Fair use. (n.d.).

Retrieved February 21, 2019, from

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/fair-use?s=t

Copyright. (n.d.).

Retrieved February 21, 2019, from

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/copyright?s=t

Copyright Information Center. (n.d.).

Retrieved February 21, 2019, from

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/copyrightinfo/fairuse.html#thumb

Starr, L. (2015). Is Fair Use a License to Steal?

Retrieved February 21, 2019, from

https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280b.shtml

Starr, L. (2010, May 05). Copyrights and Copying Wrongs.

Retrieved February 21, 2019, from

https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml