Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright and Fair Use Myth: If I’m not making money off it, it’s fair use. (And if I am making money off it, it’s not) As a teacher for 11 years, I always believed this concerning copyright and fair use. Even though this applies to all materials, I believe the biggest problem for fair use concerns materials we as educators get from the internet. What harm can really be done by copying and pasting a picture you find on the internet and quickly posting it on your power point? Do you really need permission? Using the “noncommercial” argument can work some of the time, for example sharing work in a small or closed group, however this is not fair use in every situation therefore it is better to be safe and research what constitutes as fair use. In my school, we do have a fair use and copyright poster in the media center from the United States Copyright Office, but do our teachers even know it exists. When it comes to copyright, teachers are either uneducated in it or they believe practicing fair use is just too much trouble. I have been guilty of them both. We have many resources such as ancillaries that can be reproduce, so I guess teachers just assume same goes for information on the internet. What we do not realize is we have not paid for rights to that material. As media specialists, we need to become experts on fair use and educate our staff through professional developments and trainings, even handing out policy cheat sheets. Awareness can take away all the myths surrounding fair use and copyright.