Clarifying Copyright

While reading copyright clarity, there were several things that I learned. To sum it all up, copyright makes good designers because for using copyright well, you have to consider the whole project. The intent for copyright is to spread knowledge, even within the first amendment guidelines, does not extinguish creativity. I also noticed that collaboration is so important with the idea of copyright, even among educators. Copyright and fair use is not trying to squelch what educators do; it is trying to protect creators and consumers from doing anything wrong.

 I also really liked certain cases the book presented. The Harry Potter example from the book was very interesting to me, not just because it was about Harry Potter but the idea that you cannot just make an anthology of someone’s work and use tons of quotes and other things in there, that is against fair use. I really was happy that the man in that case was in violation of copyright because when I was reading the background information, I thought that surely there would be no way they would let him! So, I was happy with that ruling. Another thing I found interesting was when they talked about those infamous charts about copyright, which you see, in secondary education all the time! This is apparently wrong. I have seen TONS of those things, which basically terrify you and list all of the things that will land you in jail for copyright infringement. It is also supremely unhelpful because it does not tell you what you CAN do, at all.  It is pretty funny to hear Hobbs say that this is not correct, because I remember thinking to my self when I viewed those charts that it would be slim what you COULD do. I also liked that she told us several things that are misconceptions, like you can never copy anything to give to someone else (false), or that fair use is only applied to educators (false), or that there is no such thing as copyright bias from companies (false) and that they will not try to scare you into purchasing things you could use for free under fair use.

The ways that copyright would impact my practice are several. I think that for my purposes, I actually teach my students about copyright and fair use (in the most basic sense), including things like citations from when you borrow information from someone else. It’s hard for the kids to understand that they cannot just borrow whatever information they want and that’s why we also talk about plagiarism a bit as well. So, for me, this book really helped me for that use- it made me realize how to better go about talking to the kids about copyright. I also think that personally, it clarified a lot of things about copyright for me. There are still some things that I think I am unsure of about copyright. I feel that it is one of those topics that is hard to fully understand, and that is something that I personally need to work on.