Educators and the Law
Things that teachers do not say often in the classroom but make an impact every single day – plagiarism, copyright infringement, attribution, transformation.
Plagiarism is a breach of ethics in which someone takes the original work of someone else and presents it as their own. Cases of plagiarism are also most often copyright infringement because the plagiarized work holds copyright (Bailey, 2013). For example, a student copy and pastes information from the Internet into their research paper and does not cite it.
Copyright infringement is any violation of a copyholder’s rights. It could include reproducing a work without permission, creating a derivative work without permission, distributing copies of the work without permission, and publicly displaying or performing the work without permission (Bailey, 2013). For example, a teacher that purchases an activity for classroom use on Teachers Pay Teachers and makes copies for the entire grade level is breaking copyright. A teacher that shows a movie on Netflix as a reward for the class is breaking copyright.
Attribution, a license under Creative Commons, allows others to change or build upon the work of the original author, whether commercially or non-commercially, as long as the original author is given credit (Creative Commons, n.d.). For example, a music artist records an original song at home and uploads it online to allow others to use it with credit.
Transformation refers to transformative use under the fair use doctrine in which copyrighted work is used without permission, but the work is transformed in a way that it is no longer copyright infringement (Stim, 2015). According to attorney Richard Stim (2015) an example of transformative use was when a seven-second clip from the Ed Sullivan show was used in “The Jersey Boys” musical history performance. This was considered transformative because it was evidence of the band’s popularity and did not lead to financial harm for the copyright owners.
Overall, these terms may not be things we say daily, but we do use them daily. It is important for educators to know and follow the law surrounding copyright.
References
Bailey, S. (2013, October 7). The difference between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Retrieved from https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2013/10/07/difference-copyright-infringement-plagiarism/
Creative Commons. (n.d.). Licenses and examples. Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/licensing-examples/#by
Stim, R. (2015, July 30). Fair use: What is transformative? Retrieved from https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-what-transformative.html
