Lesson+6

This week we will be examining copyright and fair use in the classroom. You probably know that copyright law protects the entity that owns the copyright - the license to make copies - or a work. Fair Use is a statute that allows for the limited use of a work by people other than the copyright holder. Fair Use allows educators to do things like show film clips in class. [|This article] makes a good case for why it should matter to you.

There are many videos explaining copyright law and its benevolent cousin, Fair Use, which allows educators and students to borrow segments of a copyrighted work. The first video explains why it is important to understand Fair Use. It targets media literacy educators, but if you use media in your class, you are teaching media literacy!

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If you are thinking that you are immune, beware: copyright holders can and do prosecute schools who have broken copyright law, either through ignorance or willful means. AIS subscribes to Movie Licensing USA, a company that allows us a public performance site license for many movies that we can show at school. To see if we have permission to show a movie, just go to [] and type your movie in the search bar. If it comes up, you are good to go; if not, you should talk to a librarian.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the eponymous Fair(y) Use Tale, created by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University in 2007. It uses clips of Disney films to explain copyright and fair use. It is great, the freshmen watch it in Meda Literacy every year, and it is funny, because Disney is famous for coming down hard on people who violate copyright permissions that they hold (i.e. showing a Disney film, like //High School Musical// or //Snow White//, in school).

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 * Your assignment ** is to look on the Movie Licensing USA website (listed above) and look up one move that you have either shown, or are thinking of showing, and respond to the following:

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