Unit 7: Copyright

I think that many people in the educational setting do not understand the importance of following copyright laws.  When asked the question if my school had a copyright policy, I honestly did not know the answer to that question.  When looking through the policy book, since none of our policies are actually digitized, I did find a copyright policy.  This surprised me, but in a good way since it seems like so many of our school policies are way outdated or do not exist.  The policy itself definitely could use an upgrade to discuss technology, but it is better than nothing.  One thing the policy does state is to make sure it talks about the "fair use" under federal law or else we need to get permission form the copyright owner before reproducing materials.  One thing that could be added that I liked when looking through the different websites was the thought of intellectual property.  I never understood what that meant until I watched the movie on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.  If it was not such a big deal, Zuckerberg wouldn't have had to give a lot of his money to those brothers at Harvard.

The next question that was asked is does my school district follow the copyright laws.  I would tend to lean towards yes the majority of the time, however, I am not with every teacher at all times to make sure we are following the copyright laws.  I do know that we pay for music and plays and everything in the fine arts world.  Where my concern would be is with a teacher who grabs information from the internet and uses it probably without even realizing they could be violating copyright laws.  We did have one in-service in the 9 years I have been here where we talked about copyright laws, but we are definitely past due for another one. 

My feelings on copyright laws are that they are important for creators to get compensated for what they created.  We have all heard that saying, "Don't reinvent the wheel".  This makes sense, however, whoever did invent the wheel should get compensated when someone else uses his creation!!  

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