David Garza's understanding of
Lesson 15 - Copyright and Intellectual Property Concerns

The fair use doctrine of the US copyright statute states, "It is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances." When it pertains to intellectual property and copyrighted material, DE educators must not modify, store longer than necessary, know that you are infringing on someone else's copyright, and must not profit directly from a copyright infringement. Educators that teach using the Internet and WWW must pay careful attention to copyright and intellectual property concerns because of the limitless amounts of digital information available on the web and other information resources (CD ROM, Internet, television, etc.) available to society. WWW educators must comply with all copyright laws and become familiar with the value and the appropriate use of intellectual and artistic works. Interpreting copyright law and intellectual property protections when it relates to educational purposes can be quite a challenge for the DE instructor because of all the detailed aspects and lack of legal interpretation of the law. There is no easy test to determine fair use. So, before DE programs display, distribute, and reproduce intellectual, artistic works or copyrighted materials over the Internet, they should obtain written permission from their respective owners. Educators using the WWW should ask the following questions? What is the purpose of using copyrighted material? What amount and significance of copyrighted material used? DE instructors should adhere to and adapt these copyright laws into their teaching methods or they could run the risk of infringement of property.