Copyright

I have been on both sides of copyright issue. I’ve written educational software and owned a computer store for 15 years and now I am preparing to be a purveyor of ideas and knowledge as a school library media specialist. As a small business owner I understood the business-end of things. If people illegally copied software, then the programmer, the publisher and the store owner don’t make money which would eventually result in fewer quality programs being released, prices going up, companies going out of business. I understood the ethical side of things – unauthorized copying is cheating. I understood the legal consequences – those illegally pirating software risked fines and imprisonment. In the 1980s public domain software and shareware provided legal and free or low-cost alternatives to commercial software. As a sponsor for a computer user group, I educated users about copyright and made the free software available as a way for customers to broaden their software libraries.

Just as I appreciate the need and the right of authors and publishers to make a living and be compensated for their creative work, as an instructor I feel passionately about using every possible tool to educate students. I want to share the wonder, the excitement of learning that certain images or videos, audios or movies, stories or songs can evoke. If I have the chance to make an idea crystal clear in their minds, to bring about wonder and awe, how can I not grab that opportunity? Fortunately the Fair Use guidelines for education recognize and protect those desires of teachers, who operating in good faith, use works created by others in the classroom. As a SLMS I will again educate about the responsibilities of copyright and also the rights of educators to use resources with the copyright permissions of Fair Use.