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That crazy little thing called "fair use" (and a solution)
October 11, 2007

Back in the spring, Renée Hobbs, of Temple University's Media Education Lab, came by to interview me for a study exploring teachers' understanding of the concept of fair use.  We sat for quite a while as I described my own understandings.  As I chatted with Renee, I revealed my own confusion.  I described my growing frustration with trying to do the right thing.  The right thing usually equates with seriously limiting  professional and learner use of media in a media-rich information landscape, in a landscape where it is critical to understand how to analyze, use, produce, and share media. The current fair use guidelines, produced by the Consortium of College and University Media Centers, were created a lifetime ago (in the mid-1990s).  The 2002 TEACH Act addressed changes brought about by distance learning, perhaps half a lifetime ago.

These documents don't really address my needs to use media in the library, in the classroom, with learners for whom using and producing media is like drinking water.  Although they were developed to expand use of copyrighted materials for educators, their doctrines get in the way of effective and relevant learning and teaching in the 21st century, especially as we ask learners to think deeply about media literacy.

The executive summary of this new MacArthur Foundation study, The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy, concludes: "educators today have no shared understanding of what constitutes acceptable fair use practices."  As a result of conflicting information and institutional restrictions, they "use less effective teaching techniques . . . fail to share innovative approaches, and do not take advantage of new digital platforms."

The report shares a variety of teacher (mis)understandings and contends that educational exemptions are actually far more liberal than most teachers realize. One story included in the report involved a professor who was told by Newsweek that she needed a series of permissions (including permission from Osama Bin Laden himself) to include Newsweek's cover images in her Media Constructions of War curriculum. 

Teachers see access to copyrighted materials as central to their work in preparing digital citizens.  One teacher interviewed for the for the study shared, "A literate citizenship cannot be created if the people who control images don't allow them to be used. . . We need to balance copyright ownership with other considerations, such as the democratic exhange of ideas and a healthy democracy."

Here's the important part:  The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy strongly recommends that, like other creative communities, educators articulate their shared understandings of fair use in a national code of practice, a code that would guide us as we use copyrighted materials in our teaching.

Imagine!  How wonderful it would it be if we all clearly understood the possibilities, if we could truly be sure of the advice we shared with teachers and learners, if we could creatively use the tools at hand to develop curriculum without fear of behaving unethically or illegally.

Renée sees the teacher-librarian community as "key allies" in her fair use efforts.  Try to catch her presentation at ALA in Anaheim and add your voice to a new code of practice.

View the study's webcast, presented recently at American University's Center for Social Media. 

(The study was co-authored by Peter Jaszi and Pat Aufderheide of the American University.)

Posted by Joyce Valenza on October 11, 2007 | Comments (0)