October 15, 2002

The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use (con'td)

The Copyright Quiz

Answer True or False to the following 20 questions.

Click here for the answers.

Part I: Computers and Software

1. A student snaps in half a CD-ROM the teacher really needed for her next class. The teacher decides to make a back-up copy of all her crucial disks so it never happens again. This is permissible.

2. A technology coordinator installs the one copy of Photoshop the school owns on a central server so students are able to access it from their classroom workstations. This is a violation of copyright law.

3. A school has a site license for version 3.3 of a multimedia program. A teacher buys five copies of version 4.0, which is more powerful, and installs them on five workstations in the computer lab. But now when students at these workstations create a project and bring it back to their classrooms, the computers (running 3.3) won't read the work! To end the chaos, it's permissible to install 4.0 on all machines.

4. The state mandates technology proficiency for all high school students but adds no money to schools' software budgets. To ensure equity, public schools are allowed to buy what software they can afford and copy the rest.

5. A geography teacher has more students and computers than software. He uses a CD burner to make several copies of a copyright interactive CD-ROM so each student can use an individual copy in class. This is fair use.

Part II: The Internet

6. A middle school science class studying ocean ecosystems must gather material for multimedia projects. The teacher downloads pictures and information on marine life from various commercial and noncommercial sites to store in a folder for students to access. This is fair use.

7. An elementary school designs a password-protected Web site for families and faculty only. It's OK for teachers to post student work there, even when it uses copyright material without permission.

8. A student film buff downloads a new release from a Taiwanese Web site to use for a humanities project. As long as the student gives credit to the sites from which he's downloaded material, this is covered under fair use.

9. A technology coordinator downloads audio clips from MP3.com to integrate into a curriculum project. This is fair use.

10. A teacher gets clip art and music from popular file-sharing sites, then creates a lesson plan and posts it on the school Web site to share with other teachers. This is permissible.

Part III: Video

11. A teacher videotapes a rerun of Frontier House, the PBS reality show that profiles three modern families living as homesteaders from the 1880s did. In class, students edit themselves "into" the frontier and make fun of the spoiled family from California. This is fair use.

12. A student tries to digitize the shower scene from a rented copy of Psycho into a "History of Horror" report. Her computer won't do it. The movie happens to be on an NBC station that week, so the teacher tapes it and then digitizes it on the computer for her. This is fair use.

13. A history class videotapes a Holocaust survivor who lives in the community. The students digitally compress the interview, and, with the interviewee's permission, post it on the Web. Another school discovers the interview online and uses it in their History Day project. This is fair use.

14. On Back-to-School night, an elementary school offers child care for students' younger siblings. They put the kids in the library and show them Disney VHS tapes bought by the PTA. This is permissible.

15. A teacher makes a compilation of movie clips from various VHS tapes to use in his classroom as lesson starters. This is covered under fair use.

Part IV: Multimedia

16. At a local electronics show, a teacher buys a machine that defeats the copy protection on DVDs, CD-ROMs, and just about everything else. She lets her students use it so they can incorporate clips from rented DVDs into their film genre projects. This is fair use.

17. A number of students take digital pictures of local streets and businesses for their Web projects. These are permissible to post online.

18. A student wants to play a clip of ethnic music to represent her family's country of origin. Her teacher has a CD that meets her needs. It is fair use for the student to copy and use the music in her project.

19. A high school video class produces a DVD yearbook that includes the year's top ten music hits as background music. This is fair use.

20. Last year, a school's science fair multimedia CD-ROM was so popular everyone wanted a copy of it. Everything in it was copied under fair use guidelines. It's permissible for the school to sell copies to recover the costs of reproduction.

Click here for the answers.

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