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Reflection Week 3: Copyright

Brianne Yount

Lamar University
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Copyright and How It Impacts Education

In the previous weeks of this course, we learned how much technology has grown and

changed our educational world. We also learned the impact it has had on our society and how it

has changed almost everything we do from making a phone call to researching butterflies for a

school project. This has also made changes in Copyright Laws and Digital Law. When the

internet first became worldwide and at everyone’s fingertips, no one thought of the “intellectual

property” law. Things were just being shared freely, such as songs, pictures, and information.

People did not think of the fact that they were stealing other people’s thoughts and ideas and

were not giving credit to them. This caused an uproar for change by the authors of the works who

were being stolen, and several lawmakers cracked down and got rid of sites that were allowing

copyright infringement. They also reminded users of the laws. The two worlds real life and the

digital world both have incredibly different ethical standards.

According the Ohler (2014), there needs to be a new group of people that stand behind

digital citizenship and consider the Copyright and other digital laws and create a whole new set

of ethical norms. I believe that there needs to be a change. People should no longer be okay with

our real life ethics applying to our digital world, because that world is so different from our real

life world. Ohler 2014 uses the example of theft. He compares the difference between stealing a

car and stealing a picture from a website. One feels bad when you do it and the other is just

“using other people’s stuff” (Ohler, 2014). This is the problem with using the same ethics we

have always used. This is why it is important to teach our students what the Copyright and

Digital laws are and how we can apply digital citizenship to our online lives.

As for teachers, we need to also make sure we are following Copyright laws and Fair Use

laws. In education, we have some leniency to use copyright materials for educational purposes.
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This helps spread knowledge without spending tons of money to get copies of the books or other

material for all students. The TEACH Act allows teachers to use limited amount of copies per

student of materials that extend their teaching environment and was extended in 2002 to cover

digital classrooms as well. Creative Commons licenses have also been created to help with the

educational world. The licenses let users use their material freely with only some restrictions.

This is important for teachers to understand so that we can ensure that we are setting a good

example for our students. Before this course, I was unaware of all the copyright laws and digital

laws. I was unconsciously breaking some of these laws, and was not setting a good example for

my students. This is why it is so important for me to teach digital citizenship and the component

of it in which a digital citizen should be aware of all digital laws.

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References

Ohler, Jason. [Jason Ohler] (2014, January 8). Two Camps When It Comes to Digital Ethics.

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vCMqPOm9A0