Template -- Teachers @ Work

The issue of copyright is somewhat convoluted as unfortunately the law has not quite kept up with the rapid advances in information and communication technologies. Traditionally “fair use" of textbook material is being taken to mean that a small amount of textbook material can be photocopied and used in a classroom environment without contravening copyright law. But what does this mean in a web based environment?

If you wish to use traditional web site material which is automatically copyright protected, regardless of whether the © mark is displayed, then you need to conform to copyright law. But even here there are some issues. What if you, living in New Zealand, are viewing a web site that is stored on a server in Latvia written by an author who lives in Pennsylvania; then which country’s whose copyright law would apply? Once again this is a question that has not been clearly sorted out. There are some excellent articles on copyright law as pertaining to teachers and electronic material and probably the best of these is the five-part "fair use" series of articles written by Education World http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr280a.shtml in summarising these articles the following points to come clear:

NB: Given that most of the web based material that teachers would want to use has been produced over the last five years the exclusions to copyright appeared to be quite minimal.

· "To determine whether a use is fair requires consideration of four factors," Willard added. "The first factor is the purpose of the copying, and copying to support an educational use certainly meets this standard. There are three other factors, though: how much has been copied, what kind of material has been copied, and the potential financial loss to the creator. So, although your heart and intentions may be pure, the other factors must still be considered."

· an excerpt from a work that combines language and illustrations, such as a children's book, not exceeding two pages or 10 percent of the work, whichever is less

· an article, short story, or essay of 2,500 words or less, or excerpts of up to 1,000 words or 10 percent of a longer work, whichever is less; or

· a single chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper.

· make multiple copies of different works as a substitute for the purchase of books or periodicals

We would strongly encourage all teachers to read this Education World article as well as an article by Nolo (legal and business books web site) which has also published an excellent article entitled "Getting Permission to Publish: Ten Tips for Webmasters" http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectID/8CD796F2-9770-4ECA-B8F2B4F66DB170F1/310/266/ART/ which provides would be Web authors (anyone using a WYSIWYG editor to sequence online content from a variety of sources and republish it), with a succinct collection of advice.

It should be noted that just because your school intranet may not be available to the world as it is password and protected by a User IDentity it does not mean copyright law does not apply. The concept of copyright is more about the ethical principle rather than working the law suit your particular agenda.

	Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give you credit.	Example: Jane publishes her photograph with an Attribution license, because she wants the world to use her pictures provided they give her credit. Bob finds her photograph online and wants to display it on the front page of his website. Bob puts Jane's picture on his site, and clearly indicates Jane's authorship.
	Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.	Examples: Gus publishes his photograph with a Noncommercial license. Camille incorporates a piece of Gus's image into a collage poster. Camille is not allowed to sell her collage poster without Gus's permission.
	No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.	Example: Sara licenses a recording of her song with a No Derivative Works license. Joe would like to cut Sara's track and mix it with his own to produce an entirely new song. Joe cannot do this without Jane's permission (unless his song amounts to fair use).
	Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Note: A license cannot feature both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works.

So how many web sites are using the Creative Commons licensing system? In fact there are so many web sites may using the Creative Commons licensing systems that Yahoo! has a special search capability (in beta testing), for searching web sites that use this licensing system http://search.yahoo.com/cc . Yahoo! also helps the user to restrict the search results to only those pages which:

The use of pre-prepared Digital Learning Material in combination with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) based intranets/extranets (www.knolwedge.net.nz/) is about to revolutionise education across the globe.