Copyright

After reading the article, "The Educators' Lean and Mean No FAT Guide to Fair Use" I felt pretty confident in taking a quiz on the information. Soon after reading I took the CopyRight Quiz and completely bombed it. I received a score of 52%. Soon after reading the reason why my answer was wrong I saw where I failed to carefully read and pay attention to what the question was asking. 

Most of what I learned was stuff that I felt I had already known but only knew because of what I had overheard people say. I never really sat down to read on copyright laws. I was really surprised to learn that copyright laws were not criminal laws and actually fall under civil law. 

Also I found it interesting that the Sony was sued for representing the manufacturers of VCRs. It confirms that copyright laws were not just put in place for money. That brings me to the other thing I learned form this article. Since the purpose of copyright laws are mostly about benefiting society at large is a good thing for schools. 

They are not restricted so long as they follow guidelines that in my opinion are not so hard. As long as they use it in a place dedicated to instruction. Simply stated the article mentions to just keep away from using it for entertainment or reward.

As easy as this sounds, I have seen these laws be broken many, many times. I did not think anything of it until I realized that just like we teach and model morals, values, good citizenship, and other ethical issues we should be teaching and modeling this ethical issue. Only because this is one that they will encounter more than ever in the digital world they are growing up in.

Test your knowledge with Hall Davidson's Quiz