I learned a ton of new information on copyright laws. I was really excited for this day because I always have questions about what I can and cannot use off of the internet. Especially in regards to taking pictures off the internet. I really had no idea of what I could use before, so today was really eye opening for me. When copyright was first created, a person had 14 years to basically make as much money as they could off of the product. As of 1976 (and mainly thanks to Disney) copyright last for 70 years after the creator dies. That seems super crazy to me; that is a really long time for someone to continue to make money off of something they made!
Honestly, I think the copyright laws are more confusing than anything else. It seems fair in that peoples work should be protected and they should be able to profit off of their work, but it also seems unfair that they can make money for so long. My real issue with the copyright law is exactly that. It’s especially unfair that a multibillion dollar company like Disney is going after regular people for copyright infringement (usually for very trivial things). I think copyright should be protected until the creator dies, and at that point it is public domain. It hinders people’s creativity as many ideas are built upon existing ideas or written works.
To avoid being sued while I’m teaching, I am first going to really try and understand the laws. It seems like there are a lot of grey areas and that it is very subjective. From what I understand, I can show or use copyrighted material in face to face instruction, to promote self study or for online courses. I will also use the Common Creatives website to avoid accidentally using copyrighted material. As I’ve said before, I’m really obsessed with portaportal and I think using that website will also help with copyrighting issues. I won’t have to make copies of specific articles, but I can instead send students directly to the links.
I will also check the four factors a judge uses in resolving copyright disputes when I am using copyrighted material. If I can follow all of those guidelines, I should be in good shape to use the material in my classroom; if not I will not use it. And lastly, if I am ever in doubt, I will call the copyright owner and ask them if I can use their work and if so, how I can do so. Using all these techniques should keep me protected from getting sued while I’m teaching!
To enforce copyright laws with my students I will first teach them about copyrights. I don’t think a lot of students even know what they are doing is copyright infringement, because I had no idea and I’m an adult. I think showing that mini film we watched about Disney is a helpful starting point to start talking about copyright. After discussion about that I will direct them to Common Creatives website to find things they can actually retrieve and use legally. I expect all of my students to cite where they got all pictures or graphs and I will randomly check to verify that they are not violating copyright laws. It will be a hard thing to enforce unless I am sure about the laws myself, so as I said in the beginning, I’m going to try to understand this fully.
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I agree with you about Disney and how they make money off of 'everyday people.' I understand their want to keep their material safe and to not be 'stollen' but they clearly don't need the money! I'm not sure they need to solve this in a monetary way. Simply making an agreement with these type of people (like the guy with Disney tatoos) without the use of money will likely get the job done as well. Most of the time these people are committing minor infringements, and they may not even know it was against the copyright laws. I don't believe it's ethically right for huge companies such as Disney to carry out their business in this way. There are many other better alternatives to solving this and yet still achieving the same results.
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