Introduction
Copyright Fair Use, Intellectual Property, Personal Rights Violations, and Privacy
By: Tammy Dawkins
Introduction
This toolkit will provide basic definitions and explanations of copyright, fair use, intellectual property, and personal rights violations and privacy. The reader will also be provided with helpful resources to gain a deeper understanding of each subject.
Copyright
Copyright is a federal law giving the creator of a tangible piece of work exclusive legal rights to the work (Baez & Sun, 2009). Please notice that the work must be in a tangible form for it to be covered under copyright laws. The human brain is a fascinating thing and people conjure up new and lucrative ideas every day, but unless those ideas have been written down or made into a tangible work they cannot be owned by anyone. An idea can be turned into a tangible work in many different ways, including written work, a drawing or painting, a piece of music, a screen play, etc. After an idea has been given tangible form copyright laws give the owner rights to use the work however they choose for a limited amount of time. Along with the right to use the work, the owner also has the right to create modified derivative works from the original work or the right to authorize someone else to create derivative works. Not everything is copyrightable, and copyrights do not last forever (Johnson, 2014). Things that are not eligible for copyright or have an expired copyright fall into the public domain and are considered public property.
Fair Use
Although most works are covered by copyright laws there are specifications in the laws that allow copyrighted materials to be used without permission for certain purposes including but not limited to educational purposes (Pressman, 2008). This exception to the copyright laws allows for educational institutions to use, copy and even distribute certain copyrighted material without being held accountable for copyright infringement. The following are four major factors that are considered when determining if a work has been used fairly under the fair use law:
- The purpose and character of the use
- The nature of the copyrighted work
- The amount of the work used
- The effect of the use on the market of the work
As an example consider the following;
“An instructor wants to copy a page of a copyrighted book about slavery to distribute to her classroom for a discussion on the Civil War.” In most cases this would be allowed because the instructor is using it for educational purposes, the work is correlating to the subject, the instructor is only using what portion she needs for that particular discussion, and the market is not affected because of the use.
“The instructor decides to copy an entire copyrighted book to distribute to her students to save the students from having to purchase the book.” This would not be allowed because even though it is for educational purposes, the market of the book is being affected greatly by allowing the students to have the book for free.
Instructors, students, librarians and school officials have a responsibility to know the laws pertaining to fair use and make sure that the school is adhering to those laws to avoid penalties and possible fines.
Intellectual Property
The World Intellectual Property organization defines intellectual property as “creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce (Skiba, 2015).” Intellectual property falls into one of two categories, Industrial Property and copyright. Industrial property covers patents for inventions and trademarks and copyright covers the creative expression of ideas literary works, musical works, and artistic works. Intellectual property is very valuable. Intellectual property can be a logo or a trade secret such as secret ingredients, or it can be piece of work that holds value. Instructors create course room materials which hold value to both the instructor and the institution. Instructors are often required to sign contracts when they are hired at an educational institution that give the institution rights to any course materials that are created while working for them (Aaron & Roche, 2015). This is known as the Work Made for Hire doctrine. Instructors and future instructors should make sure they review these hire on contracts thoroughly and understand exactly what rights the will have and what rights they are giving up.
Personal Rights Violations and Privacy
As technology and social media advances personal rights and privacy diminishes (Dorraji & Barcys, 2014). Everyone wants to believe they are safe and their private lives are hidden from the world but with new advances in the digital world, more information can be found about people than most would be comfortable with. When someone searches online for a red shirt, undoubtedly they will begin to see advertisements for red shirts pop up on every site they visit including social media sites. In this every changing era where privacy regulations are becoming endangered species, instructors and educational institutions still have a responsibility to maintain privacy for their students (von Feigenblatt, Caldevilla Domínguez, & Gonzálvez Vallés, 2015) . While it is becoming more and more difficult to provide privacy in e-learning situations the educational institution must have safety criteria in place to protect the students’ privacy. In the online environment all coursework materials, grades and personal information must be kept password protected where only authorized individuals can view or change the information. Instructors must be mindful and cautious of how they interact with their students. One study insisted that students responded better to discussion through a Facebook forum versus an online classroom forum (Kent, 2013). While this may be true, the instructor cannot protect the intellectual property of the school or the student on a social media site like Facebook and should refrain from posting course material on these kind of sites. Even though social media is a part of everyone’s life now, we cannot forget that personal educational information has to be held to a higher confidential standing.
Task
Please review all of these helpful links, articles and videos to further your understanding of the subjects that have been introduced.
Copyright
The Copyright Laws http://copyright.gov/title17/
Purdue’s University Copyright Office offers information on copyright including lists to determine what is copyrightable and what is not. https://www.lib.purdue.edu/uco/CopyrightBasics/basics.html
Legalzoom explains copyright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juS_4rBCHY4
Fair Use
A lawyer explains fair use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opqlNGBB0c8
Fair use for classroom material http://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/academic-and-educational-permissions/non-coursepack/
Intellectual Property
World Intellectual Property Organization Website http://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/
Intellectual property explained http://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/intproperty/450/wipo_pub_450.pdf
What is Intellectual Property? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDKxuTi2Cmk
Personal Rights Violations and Privacy
Student Privacy and Online Education https://tech.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Student-Privacy-and-Online-Educational-Services-February-2014.pdf
Importance of student privacy http://er.educause.edu/articles/2004/1/the-importance-of-policies-in-elearning-instruction
Protecting Students Privacy videos
Process
I used the Webquest titled “How to Create a Webquest” found here https://www.createwebquest.com/dgrissom/how-create-webquest to learn how to create this toolkit. I used Microsoft Word to create my document and then used cut and paste functions to move the information to the Webquest. I thought the Webquest would keep my formatting from the Word document but it did not. I had to change a lot of my formatting and fix several things after pasting. After pasting the introduction I clicked on the task tab and there was no editing box for me to type or paste into. I tried several things to get the box to show up but it never happened so I eventually had to download a different browser. I downoaded Mozilla FireFox and everything seemed to be where it was supposed to be after that. After completing each tab I clicked save and view the Webquest to make sure everything looked correct. I was unable to get the credits page to format correctly. I could not figure out how to do the hanging indention.
Evaluation
On the Task tab there are several links to web pages, articles and videos that will help the reader better understand all of the subjects introduced. I personally appreciate the videos because having someone actually explain the concepts in their own words helps me to grasp the subjects better. I hope that the reader is able to do the same. The articles I chose were articles that helped me gain deeper understanding of the specifics of each subject after watching the videos and gaining the basic understanding. I also provided the site that has the copyright laws in their entirety for examination, clarification and reference purposes.
Conclusion
This Webquest toolkit provided an overall understanding of copyright, fair use, intellectual property, and personal rights and privacy. The purpose was to expose the reader to the subjects and provide a basic understanding while offering valuable resources to further the reader's understanding if used as mentioned.
Credits
Aaron, L. S., & Roche, C. M. (2015). Intellectual property rights of faculty in the digital age evolution or dissolution in 21st century academia. Journal Of Educational Technology Systems, 43(3), 320-341. doi:10.1177/0047239515570582.
Baez, B, and Sun, J (2009). Intellectual property in the information age: Knowledge as commodity and its legal implications for higher education. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Periodicals Inc.
Dorraji, S. E., & Barcys, M. (2014). Privacy in digital age: Dead or alive?! Regarding the new data protection regulations. Social Technologies / Socialines Technologijos, 4(2), 306. doi:10.13165/ST-14-4-2-05.
Johnson, L. (2014, July 31). Copyright basics: What is a copyright and why is it important? Retrieved November 17, 2015, from https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/copyright-basics-what-is-a-copyright….
Kent, M. (2013). Changing the conversation: Facebook as a venue for online class discussion in higher education. Journal Of Online Learning & Teaching, 9(4), 546-565.
Pressman, R. R. (2008). Fair use: Law, ethics and librarians. Journal Of Library Administration, 47(3/4), 89-110.
Skiba, D. J. (2015). Intellectual property in the connected age. Nursing Science Quarterly, 28(3), 210-212 3p. doi:10.1177/089431841558562.
von Feigenblatt, O. F., Caldevilla Domínguez, D., & Gonzálvez Vallés, J. E. (2015). The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Right (FERPA). Journal Of Alternative Perspectives In The Social Sciences, 6(3), 329-335
Teacher Page
I recommend using firefox for creating Webquests. I was unable to get any other browswer to work. Also I recommend typing directly into the text boxes and not copying and pasting from a different word processor. In my opnion it took entirely too much time to reformat after pasting and I would have been better to just use the box and formatting options provided. Hpwever make sure you save often so you do not lose any work.