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12 Nov 08

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Great article outlining copyright, fair use and explaning the 5 principles of fair use in education.

wwwdev.ncte.org/...fairusemedialiteracy - Preview

medialiteracy bestpractices copyright fairuse 5 principles 2008 digitalcitizenship

Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances -- especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question -- as it does for certain narrowly defined classroom activities.
guide identifies five principles that represent the media literacy education community’s current consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials
31 more annotations...
- code of best practices does not tell you the limits of fair use rights. Instead, it describes how those rights should apply in certain recurrent situations.
- Media literacy education distinctively features the analytical attitude that teachers and learners, working together, adopt toward the media objects they study. The foundation of effective media analysis is the recognition that:
  All media messages are constructed.
  Each medium has different characteristics and strengths and a unique language of construction.
  Media messages are produced for particular purposes.
  All media messages contain embedded values and points of view.
  People use their individual skills, beliefs and experiences to construct their own meanings from media messages.
  Media and media messages can influence beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, and the democratic process.
  Making media and sharing it with listeners, readers, and viewers is essential to the development of critical thinking and communication skills. Feedback deepens reflection on one’s own editorial and creative choices and helps students grasp the power of communication.
- Lack of clarity reduces learning and limits the ability to use digital tools. Some educators close their classroom doors and hide what they fear is infringement; others hyper-comply with imagined rules that are far stricter than the law requires, limiting the effectiveness of their teaching and their students’ learning.
- Educators and learners in media literacy often make uses of copyrighted materials that stand far outside the marketplace, for instance, in the classroom, at a conference, or within a school-wide or district-wide festival. Such uses, especially when they occur within a restricted-access network, do enjoy certain copyright advantages.
- Law provides copyright protection to creative works in order to foster the creation of culture. Its best known feature is protection of owners’ rights. But copying, quoting, and generally re-using existing cultural material can be, under some circumstances, a critically important part of generating new culture.
- In reviewing the history of fair use litigation, we find that judges return again and again to two key questions:
  Did the unlicensed use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
  Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
  If the answers to these two questions are "yes," a court is likely to find a use fair. Because that is true, such a use is unlikely to be challenged in the first place.
- Both key questions touch on, among other things, the question of whether the use will cause excessive economic harm to the copyright owner. Courts have told us that copyright owners aren’t entitled to an absolute monopoly over transformative uses of their works.
- Another consideration underlies and influences the way in which these questions are analyzed: whether the user acted reasonably and in good faith, in light of general practice in his or her particular field.
- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
- Through its five principles, this code of best practices identifies five sets of current practices in the use of copyrighted materials in media literacy education to which the doctrine of fair use clearly applies. These practices are associated with K–12 education, higher education, and in classes given by nonprofit organizations. When students or educators use copyrighted materials in their own creative work outside of an educational context, they can rely on fair use guidelines created by other creator groups, including documentary filmmakers and online video producers.
- These principles apply to all forms of media.
- The principles apply in institutional settings and to non-school-based programs.
- The principles concern the unlicensed fair use of copyrighted materials for education, not the way those materials were acquired.
- where a use is fair, it is irrelevant whether the source of the content in question was a recorded over-the-air broadcast, a teacher’s personal copy of a newspaper or a DVD, or a rented or borrowed piece of media. Labels on commercial media products proclaiming that they are “licensed for home [or private or educational or noncommercial] use only” do not affect in any way the educator’s ability to make fair use of the contents—in fact, such legends have no legal effect whatsoever. (If a teacher is using materials subject to a license agreement negotiated by the school or school system, however, she may be
  bound by the terms of that license.)
- The principles are all subject to a “rule of proportionality.”
- fairness of a use depends, in part, on whether the user took
  more than was needed to accomplish his or her legitimate purpose.
- PRINCIPLES
- ONE: Employing Copyrighted Material in Media Literacy Lessons
- TWO: Employing Copyrighted Materials in Preparing Curriculum Materials
- THREE: Sharing Media Literacy Curriculum Materials
- In materials they wish to share, curriculum developers should be
  especially careful to choose illustrations from copyrighted media that are necessary
  to meet the educational objectives of the lesson, using only what furthers the
  educational goal or purpose for which it is being made.
- FOUR: Student Use of Copyrighted Materials in Their Own Academic and Creative Work
- Students should be able to understand and demonstrate, in a manner
  appropriate to their developmental level, how their use of a copyrighted work
  repurposes or transforms the original. For example, students may use copyrighted
  music for a variety of purposes, but cannot rely on fair use when their goal is simply
  to establish a mood or convey an emotional tone, or when they employ popular songs
  simply to exploit their appeal and popularity.
- FIVE: Developing Audiences for Student Work
- If student work that incorporates, modifies, and re-presents existing
  media content meets the transformativeness standard, it can be distributed to wide
  audiences under the doctrine of fair use.
- Educators and learners in media literacy often make uses of copyrighted works outside the marketplace, for instance in the classroom, a conference, or within a school-wide or district-wide festival. When sharing is confined to a delimited network, such uses are more likely to receive special consideration under the fair use doctrine.
- Especially in situations where students wish to share their work more broadly (by distributing it to the public, for example, or including it as part of a personal portfolio), educators should take the opportunity to model the real-world permissions process, with explicit emphasis not only on how that process works, but also on how it affects media making.
- The ethical obligation to provide proper attribution also should be examined.
- This code of best practices, by contrast, is shaped by educators for educators and the learners they serve, with the help of legal advisors. As an important first step in reclaiming their fair use rights, educators should employ this document to inform their own practices in the classroom and beyond
- MYTH: Fair Use Is Just for Critiques, Commentaries, or Parodies.
  Truth: Transformativeness, a key value in fair use law, can involve modifying material or putting material in a new context, or both. Fair use applies to a wide variety of purposes, not just critical ones. Using an appropriate excerpt from copyrighted material to illustrate a key idea in the course of teaching is likely to be a fair use, for example. Indeed, the Copyright Act itself makes it clear that educational uses will often be considered fair because they add important pedagogical value to referenced media objects.
- So if work is going to be shared widely, it is good to be able to rely on transformativeness. As the cases show, a transformative
  new work can be highly commercial in intent and effect and qualify under the fair use doctrine.