As a teacher I always thought it was OK to use copyrighted
material in class as long as I was using it to teach an educational lesson.
After looking at the law it seems that there is a very grey area under the fair
use flag where teachers can claim fair use. The Law says it’s OK to use a small
percentage of the copyrighted material, but what does this actual percentage
mean? If I’m using a particular series
to show my students specifics about astronomy does percentage mean I can use
only a specific percentage of each individual episode, or just a percentage of
the over series? I am also perplexed about the process of using media for
educational purposed based upon the question pertaining to the necessity of
using the video in the lesson. There are times when I am teaching where some
students will understand the material without the use of visual reinforcement,
but then there are other students who need the visual reinforcement to
understand the material. How does one prove or disprove that the use of the
media in the lesson is not needed, when every student learns in a different
way? There are also times when I am using a guerrilla style of teaching where I
show the students a video that at the time does not seem to fit in the lesson,
but after the video is shown I am able to get my students to understand the
material better by relating it back to the video I had just shown. Since I do
not need the video at first to teach the lesson would this be a copyright infringement?
These are some important question one must ask themselves when defending their use
of the copyrighted material. I found it interesting to hear that the parody
amendment to copyright was brought about by Weird Al. I saw a behind the music
episode about him a few years back and it emphasized that he went to each
individual artist to get their consent. I wonder if his pursuit of this
amendment was due to an argument with a particular artist or as a fail safe for
a possible future legal battle.
Excellent questions... so the question isn't addressing different students' learning style (visual vs. auditory vs. reading...), but whether you can replace the media with another piece of media and still teach the unit. So, it's not really about efficiency but about how connected the media is to the heart of the lesson. As for guerrilla instruction of bringing students into the subject through the back-door, so to speak, it's really the same problem of how connected the media is to the subject. Can another piece of media serve the same purpose? If so, then is not Fair Use. This is my understanding, based on presentations by one of Full Sail's instructors who is a lawyer with a background in IP law, Cassie Willard.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the Weird Al stuff, yeah, it seems ... well, weird that even though parody got approved through his efforts that he still tries to get artist approval before publishing a parody. I'm guessing that his record label is tired of the potential court costs that they'd still face from those who might sue. We call that the belt and suspenders move. :-)