Scenario:
Bob has been teaching high school for 3 years. There has been a big push to use technology in the classroom. All the students are given laptops at school. One morning Bob found the students were sharing music files that had been downloaded from some Internet site. When he checked the students' laptops, he found these laptops had big collections of music, images and even papers that the students had gotten from the Internet. This explained the similar texts and images appearing in the students' assignments and the changes and improvements in writing skills! Bob approached one student. The student said, "I used these things for educational purposes. It is fair use."
Questions:
Bob wants his students to use Internet research as a guide to finding the facts supporting or disproving their own ideas. His students are not getting their original ideas by thinking critically on their own but by copying the ideas of other individuals.
As Bob’s students leave to go out in the real world, potential employees will be looking for individuals that have specific knowledge and skills. Looking up information on the internet and taking someone else ideas is more like a crutch as opposed to be able to think on one’s feet. As educators, it is imperative that we can teach students to think for themselves, and be able to prepare students to enter the world with good problem-solving strategies and an overall I-can-do-it attitude.
Website search engines such as:
http://www.2learn.ca/mapset/SafetyNet/plagiarism/sleuth/StringSearchnew.html
or just www.google.com
are easy ways to find whether a phrase or sentence has been copied from the Internet; however, this way can only be used to search documents that are accessible to the public. In order to scan more private databases, numerous plagiarism detection software programs can be purchased. Your school system may already have a license to a similar program already.
The student said it was fair use. Is this true in this situation? In order for a student to determine whether the work is being fairly used, they must consider the four factors of fair use. They must look at the purpose and character of use, the nature of the copyrighted work, the amount, and the effect. There are four good questions one can ask to determine whether information is used being fairly or not. First, is the information being used for commercial or educational purposes? Secondly, is the information accurate and worthy of publishing in your work? Next, how much of the information are you using, and how does the information relate to the quality of the rest of you work. Finally, is the piece of information going to be used as effectively in your work as it is away from its whole?
The work that is copyrighted is protected no matter where it is found on the computer.
The internet is not all for public use. There is both copyrighted and uncopyrighted information available.
Permission from the author is always required to use any copyrighted materials when you want to use the material for sale, when you want to use the material repeatedly, and when you want to use the material in its entirety or if it’s lengthy. The more you use, the less it becomes fair use. Excerpts used should be less than 1,000 words or 10 percent of the work.
You should always credit the source of your information.
Fair use only allows you to use your sources for two year. Then you must obtain permission again.
Copyrighting protects against multiple copies of the work being made, selling copies of the work, making new works solely based on that work, and publicly displaying the work.