Fair Use and Copyright Issues in Schools

Fair Use and Copyright Issues in Schools

Introduction

Copyright is defined as the concept in law that gives exclusive rights to the creator, author or inventor of something. This awarding of rights is usually for a limited time period. The concept of copyright is practiced by the governments in most of the countries. The person or entity having the copyright enjoys the right to copy or reproduce.

On the other hand, fair use is the limitation or exception that is imposed on the exclusive rights enjoyed by the person having the copyright. Fair use means that anyone can reproduce or use the copyrighted work of the creator, inventor or author, but only for purposes that are fair. In short, fair use allows copying the copyrighted work without permission for a fair purpose (Buttler, 2010).

The concept of copyright and fair use applies on a broad range of things. One of its applications is content present on the internet and multimedia material used in education. This includes, but is not limited to e-books, presentations, CDs, DVDs and such storage media. These contents are usually copyrighted but fair use policy also applies on them. In this paper, the aspects of copyright and fair use policy in schools would be highlighted.

Discussion

Fair use is a principle in law that describes the limitations and constraints on the exclusive rights acquired by the holder of the copyright. From the school' and education's perspective, the purpose of copyright and fair use is to provide guidance regarding their applications by scholars, principals of schools, educators and students who create projects and educational material using multimedia technology. This is usually accomplished by utilizing parts of copyrighted works. However, fair use policy is followed by them as it gives them more flexibility and ...