To use or not to use...that is the question?

Educational resources are subject to the same copyright laws that exist for other forms of publication and this includes incorporating subject matter or images that may have been located, accessed, copied and or adapted via the internet. However, traditional copyright laws are somewhat ambiguous in regards to the internet, as these statutes were originally written before the ‘information highway’ dramatically changed the landscape of modern society (Hill 2008). As a rule, the education sector is generally allowed to utilise and incorporate 5% of copyrighted material into resources and this allowance is usually stipulated for use in non-commercial purposes, such as education. This allowance is outlined by Wollerton (2009, online) who details the amendment to current legislation and writes that; “Fair Dealing...is an exemption in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 which allows a degree of copying (i.e. single copies of short extracts of copyrighted works) for the purposes of “research or private study”. Similarly, the American “TEACH Act enables nonprofit, accredited academic institutions to use copyright-protected material for the purpose of distance education, without the need to pay royalties or obtain permission from the owner” (Lakhan and Khurana 2008, online).

However, it may be prudent for educational practitioners who decide to avail themselves of any such materials, to ensure that there is no infringement on the rights of the creator and seek further clarification and or permission to use such material. The educator should ideallly limit the amount of copies made to a reasonable level and limit the period of use. It may also be pertinent to cite the creator or author accordingly by the using some form of referencing guide incorporated into the resource.

Reference List

Hill, C. (2008) Teaching with e-learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector. 2nd Edition. Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd.

Lakhan, S., and Khurana, M. (2008) Intellectual property, copyright, and fair use in education. [Online]. Available: http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/289.shtml [28th January 2010].

Wollerton, H. (2009) University Copyright Guidelines. [Online]. Available: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/legalservices/whentouse/copyright [28th January 2010].