March 2008 — Digital Content

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Do the (Copy)right Thing

by Neal Starkman

"There's no shortage of education materials on the value of copyright and the risk of infringement," according to Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president for intellectual properties at the Software & Information Industry Association (www.siia.net). The organization's website offers copyright information-in the form of both a primer and a guide, which include questions and answers, charts, and posters-for administrators, as well as links to a K-8 curriculum called CyberSmart!. The curriculum, created by The CyberSmart Education Company, addresses issues such as computer ethics, respecting the law, and cyber citizenship in a series of lesson plans and activity sheets.

But introducing educators to the law doesn't necessarily mean persuading them to stick to it if they think they're unlikely to be sued and too busy to bother complying. Says Simpson, "Many administrators convey the attitude, 'If we don't get caught, who cares?'" Kardick says that last spring she wanted to do a districtwide in-service for teachers and administrators, but found that "copyright instruction wasn't a real high priority." Neither the administrators nor the faculty thought that their lack of knowledge about the law was any kind of crisis.

Not true. The chances of transgressing copyright law are greater than ever, as new technologies provide more means of disseminating creative work, whether it's a football coach setting a compilation of game footage to a soundtrack of popular music and selling the DVD to parents, or a principal purchasing a software program and making multiple copies for teachers.

ByteSize

To view the copyright policy of Bellingham Public Schools in the state of Washington, go here.

One potential area of trouble for a school is its website, points out Nancy Willard, author and executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. "If a school has a public website upon which a student has posted material that infringes on the copyright of someone, the school could get into jeopardy," she says. Willard thinks schools need to take preemptory steps. One of her recommendations is that schools have a "Website Concerns" link so that concerns over material posted by staff or students can quickly and easily be resolved.

Student plagiarizing can also pose a danger to districts, says Simpson, since districts often post on their website the best examples of students' written work: "About two months later, the real author contacts them. So the reason the schools don't get caught is because the writer hasn't found them yet."

A Matter of Ethics