Blog 9: Copyright Clarity
Blog 9: Copyright Clarity
For me, Copyright is far from clear. I’ve always used the rules I’ve been told,
but I don’t know that they are right. I think, mostly, they’re safe, but I even question that, at this point. I am one of the educators who is very worried
about copyright issues.
“Copyright Clarity” suggests the avenue of Fair Use as a protection from copyright lawsuits. “The doctrine of fair use exists to support the kinds of copying, borrowing, and sharing that are so essential to fertilize and nurture the creative process.” This all sounds great, but I’m not sure the bulk of the authors/composers/creators/”owners” out there would agree, and I don’t know that I would have the courage to challenge them. The book goes on to discuss transformative use, which I interpret to mean that, if you make enough changes to the original work that it has been transformed to some other purpose or meaning, you’re good to go. Changing the purpose of the work, (going from a photograph to a guidebook) seemed to be an acceptable practice. BUT… I then read the 5 copyright lawsuits for this week, and I can see that I am wrong about this one! I thought perhaps transformative might also mean (as an example), taking a photo and making it into something funny, like a dog picture transformed into a cartoon photo of a dog in curlers and housecoat complaining about her “husband”. Again, looking at the 5 lawsuits, it sounds like I would be sued big time for this use, even though I would have thought I transformed it. After reading the book, and our class discussion, I thought I had walked out of the room with a better understanding. I can see that I’m back to where I was.
“Copyright Clarity” suggests the avenue of Fair Use as a protection from copyright lawsuits. “The doctrine of fair use exists to support the kinds of copying, borrowing, and sharing that are so essential to fertilize and nurture the creative process.” This all sounds great, but I’m not sure the bulk of the authors/composers/creators/”owners” out there would agree, and I don’t know that I would have the courage to challenge them. The book goes on to discuss transformative use, which I interpret to mean that, if you make enough changes to the original work that it has been transformed to some other purpose or meaning, you’re good to go. Changing the purpose of the work, (going from a photograph to a guidebook) seemed to be an acceptable practice. BUT… I then read the 5 copyright lawsuits for this week, and I can see that I am wrong about this one! I thought perhaps transformative might also mean (as an example), taking a photo and making it into something funny, like a dog picture transformed into a cartoon photo of a dog in curlers and housecoat complaining about her “husband”. Again, looking at the 5 lawsuits, it sounds like I would be sued big time for this use, even though I would have thought I transformed it. After reading the book, and our class discussion, I thought I had walked out of the room with a better understanding. I can see that I’m back to where I was.
Basically, the suits I read for homework seem to come down
to money, citation, and amount, in that order. If the original author or rights owner feels that they have been gypped out of
money, it appears that you will lose your case for fair use, no matter
what. One example from this week
suggested that the law suit discussed was settled by sharing the money that was
made. That seems to be best case
scenario; The case may also be dragged
out in court. I would suggest that it’s
safest to get permission to avoid this situation in the first place!
I’ve always encouraged my students to cite their sources,
since it would seem only fair to give the original source credit. I think I’m right on this one. At least, I got this response marked as
correct on my quiz. That doesn’t mean
that I don’t need to ask permission, should a substantial portion be used AND,
if I get the answer no, that I don't need to stop and rethink my work.
That brings the idea of amount to the forefront. Apparently, it’s a maximum of 30 seconds of
music, transformative or not. I’m not
certain the number of words or pages. I
would guess that the rough rule would be that it not be enough to represent a
significant percentage of the overall work.
Again, I would be cautious with this.
What have I learned from Copyright Clarity? That there are brave people out there who are
willing to use the argument of “Fair Use” to support their use of other people’s
material! Actually, I’m sure, legally,
that this is a defensible position. I’m
just not clear enough on what it means to use it with any confidence. Moving forward, I’ll probably stick to what I
do until I get a better sense of right and wrong in this.
I agree that Copyright Clarity presented a gray area when it came to copyright infringement. Ultimately, it is up to the user to make the determination of whether an element of transformativeness exists. It is difficult to navigate right and wrong without a clear set of guidelines. However, the use of copyrighted materials supports creativity and experimentation. Overall, one has to weigh the pros and cons between possible infringement and student progress.
ReplyDeleteI must admit that Copyright is still far from clear to me, but I think that a key aspect of it is transformativeness. I am aware that there are some limitations and I feel it’s important to be careful and reflect before using copyrighted materials. I am sure that I should should use attributions when using someone else’s work, but there are also other questions worth asking, and I think that you identified them well: What’s the economic impact for the author of the original work? How much can I use claiming fair use? Should I ask for permission every time I need to use picture? These are, indeed, critical questions.
ReplyDeleteLike you mentioned in your comment to me, I had this newfound clarity after reading the book. THEN I took the quiz that was posted for last week's assignment, yeah, 60%...so perhaps there's confusion on my end, too. Here's how I'm taking it all--as long I'm not making profit from someone else's work, as long as I'm transforming it in someway or another, and I'm using to better my students' education, I'm hoping it's fine. As others have mentioned, there's a lot of gray area still there. We have to be the decision makers of it's fair use or not, and the thought of possibly getting sued indeed is scary. So I definitely understand the playing it safe game.
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