To Copy or to Create: An Old Issue Made New Again by Today’s Digital Students

Copying information from the Internet is so easy and most people do it so regularly that it doesn’t really seem like stealing or even borrowing. While the copyright issue is something we’ve all heard of, how does it apply educators and students?

At Carnegie Middle School in Orangevale, CA, Media Teacher Brian Weitzel deals with this problem daily. “The copyright issue has become very big in recent years and with our generation of students who are so digitally oriented and so digitally native, as the phrase has been coined, they’re used to seeing and getting music or artwork off the Internet,” he says. “What they need to be made aware of, and what I impress very strongly on my students, is that it’s just like the work that they make, if somebody is going to use it again, you want to be given credit for that.”

Weitzel teaches multimedia to his students, starting the day with a studio crew creating a live TV broadcast called Carnegie Connection to the entire student body. Then the students continue the class, making video “commercials” or PSA style messages — such as how to be successful in life — that run during the broadcast. The students also like to enter their video productions in contests, such as the SEVAs but must resolve the fact that the music they like or think works perfectly with their video isn’t legal to use except in the classroom.

What is the copyright law?

The U.S. Copyright Law encourages the development of the arts and sciences by protecting the creative work of the individuals in our society — composers, authors, poets, dramatists, choreographers and others. However, through the legislative compromise, educators can use some copyright protected works in the classroom. There is also the concept of Fair Use that allows certain uses that would otherwise be illegal infringements of the copyright owner’s rights. > more