As today's tech-savvy teens become increasingly involved with technology and the Internet for learning, work, civic engagement, and entertainment, it is vital to ensure that they understand their legal rights and responsibilities under copyright law and also how the law affects creativity and innovation.
This curriculum is designed to give teachers a comprehensive set of tools to educate students about copyright while incorporating activities that exercise a variety of learning skills. Lesson topics include: the history of copyright law; the relationship between copyright and innovation; fair use and its relationship to remix culture; peer-to-peer file sharing; and the interests of the stakeholders that ultimately affect how copyright is interpreted by copyright owners, consumers, courts, lawmakers, and technology innovators.
The lesson plan concludes with a mock trial that tests the students' understanding of copyright and its limitations and encourages them to consider the positions of each party involved.
Each lesson plan begins with an overview and Notes for the Educator. These sections provide background information about the lesson topic; additional context about related issues, events, and controversies; and additional information about the activities outlined later in the lesson plan.
The Resources section gives a list of the materials and Teaching Copyright handouts relevant to each lesson. The list is divided into three sections: resources for the educator; resources used by students in class; and resources used by the students for homework. The Resources section also lists web-accessible readings.
Finally, the Lesson Activities section outlines each lesson's combination of games, discussions, worksheets, and homework designed to advance the students' understanding of the lesson topic and engage students' critical thinking and research skills. Some lessons feature extension ideas that can be used by educators interested in deepening the students' involvement with a particular lesson.
Student evaluation will be based on individual participation in class discussions, group research and presentations, homework assignments, and written and verbal participation in the final class project.
In this lesson, students will begin to explore the often-perplexing world of copyrights by defining the essential elements of U.S. copyright law. Beginning with the Copy Quiz game and a free-form class discussion, students will tease out collective and individual ideas about the rights of creators and users. Then students will be asked to reflect on their experiences making and using creative works online and write down the questions that they want answered by the end of the unit.
Over the course of two centuries, copyright has evolved into a particularly complex body of law. But the essential concerns that led the Founders to include copyright in the Constitution but limit its scope are very much a part of the modern debate about copyright and its role in culture, commerce, creativity, technology, and learning.
Lesson 1 is designed to help you give students a framework and vocabulary for exploring copyright and technology in the subsequent lessons. The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) documents and the additional readings will help you respond to most student questions and identify discussion subtopics that will be particularly relevant to your classroom.
Copyright law is all about balance. Copyright laws give creators the right to be compensated for many uses of their works as well as the ability to control many uses of their works. However, those rights are limited in time and scope, in order to ensure that the public is able to access and re-use creative works in new and interesting ways. Thus, while copyright is often narrowly discussed in terms of restrictions, there are aspects of the law that exist to facilitate the rights and freedoms of (re)users as well as those of the original creators. These permissive aspects of copyright law include the fair use doctrine (which permits use of copyrighted material under many circumstances) and the public domain (into which copyright works "fall" when the copyright term ends) and are vital components of any discussion of copyright and responsibility online.
The Copy Quiz game is a fun activity that quickly relates the numerous situations where copyright law has an impact, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, blogging and other forms of online communication, research, and even homework.
For homework, the Copyright History Worksheet gives students questions to answer after completing the additional reading. The history-focused readings and questions build on the copyright concepts discussed in Lesson 1 and introduce the issues to be covered in Lesson 2: A Brief History of Copyright and Innovation.
Place two chairs facing the students at the front of the class and ask the students to divide into two teams. Place a "true" sign on one chair and a "false" sign on the other chair. You will act as the game's host, asking questions from the Copy Quiz.
Ask the two teams to form a line. Have the students at the front of each team's line answer a question by racing to sit in the correct chair. The student that first reaches the correct chair remains "in" and returns to the back of their team's line; the other student sits down and is counted "out." The game will naturally end as students are eliminated from the game or when you run out of questions from the Copy Quiz.
(10 minutes) Using the three Teaching Copyright FAQs on copyright, fair use, and the public domain, as well as Cornell University's "Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States" chart, walk your students through the legal definitions and terms of copyright law. Write the categories "Copyright," "Fair Use," and "Public Domain" on the board, and ask the students to brainstorm examples for each.
Here are some examples for each category:
While taking suggestions from the class, be aware that the legal status of some uses is sometimes unclear. One thing that students may learn from this exercise is that copyright law results in some ambiguities that sometimes wind up decided in the courts.
(10 minutes) Ask the class to come up with examples of ways that copyrighted works are used on the Internet. Prompt them to consider even the more mundane examples, such as newspaper columns, blog posts, and personal pictures on photo sharing sites.
(10 minutes) Ask the students to describe some of their technology use:
Then ask them to write down some questions about copyright that they would like answered by the end of the unit. Collect the questions and save them for use in Lesson 5.
Students should read Siva Vaidhyanathan's article, "Why Thomas Jefferson Would Love Napster?" and Daniel J. Cohen & Roy Rosenzweig's "Digital History: Owning the Past: A Brief History of Copyright" articles and complete the Copyright History Worksheet in preparation for the history discussion in the next lesson.
Keep track of students' participation during the Copy Quiz game and during the discussion.
Create a "Copyright at the Crossroads" student newspaper with original articles, editorials and cartoons about the current legislative and cultural debate around file-sharing technology. The newspaper layout can be less formal if the students want to produce a photocopied version to pass out to the class.
From the framers of the Constitution, who were worried about books and pamphlets, to present-day stakeholders, who are concerned about DVDs, MP3s, and the Internet, the story of copyright law is an ongoing struggle to balance copyright holders' rights with the public interest. New technologies constantly challenge that balance.
In this lesson, students will examine the historical relationship between copyright law and technological innovation in the U.S. Working in teams, they will research a technology and assess how it may have affected users and copyright holders, as well as whether or not a public controversy resulted from its use. With this historical context in mind, students will then examine current copyright policy debates about music downloading and file-sharing.
Modern copyright dates back to the English Statute of Anne, enacted in the 18th century, which gave authors an exclusive right, for 14 years, to copy and distribute their works. The right could be renewed just once, if the author was still alive when the right expired. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution considered this right important enough to include in the Constitution: Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution authorizes Congress "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." In 1790, Congress passed the first U.S. Copyright Act, which, like the Statute of Anne, gave authors an exclusive copyright for a 14-year term, with the possibility of renewal for another 14-year term. U.S. Copyright has undergone two major revisions since – in 1909 and 1976 – but has also been incrementally amended, particularly in recent years. One steady trend has been the lengthening of the copyright term from "14 + 14" to, as of 1998, "life + 70" (the life of the author plus 70 years).
Copyright law has always been a balancing act between the rights of creators and the rights of the public. As each new technology emerges, and as each new revision is made to copyright law, the balance shifts. It is along this edge of copyright that innovation flourishes, often leading to additional changes in the law.
For example, in 1976, Universal City Studios and the Walt Disney Company sued Sony, seeking to have the Betamax VCR impounded as a tool of piracy. In their view, there were virtually no noninfringing uses of the VCR, since home taping of television was thought to violate the copyright owner's reproduction right. The Supreme Court in 1984 disagreed, ruling that home taping of television programs for later viewing ("time-shifting") constituted a fair use.
Two aspects of the Betamax case are important for our purposes. First, most copyright scholars at the time felt that home taping would not qualify as fair use. In particular, a court had never before found a use to be fair where (1) the copyist reproduced the entirety of a work and (2) did so for a purely consumptive, nontransformative purpose. So, had you considered the shape of the fair use doctrine in 1976, you would probably have concluded that time-shifting was not a fair use. The Supreme Court in 1984 expanded the fair use doctrine in response to the new possibilities created by the VCR.
Speckled throughout the history of copyright law, the same pattern arises – wherever an activity has been deemed a fair use (and often even before, so long as a company is willing to gamble that it will be deemed a fair use), innovation flourishes as technology companies help the public to make the most of copyrighted works. Examples include the photocopier, the audio cassette deck, the CD-RW drive, and the web browser, among others. With the introduction of each new technology, copyright law is tested and evolves. This lesson should help students think about the current state of copyright's evolution in relation to the new technologies they use in their daily lives, such as P2P, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace.
Starting the lesson with a question-and-answer review of Lesson 1's homework readings and the History Worksheet will help the class develop a solid footing in copyright basics before examining the effect that copyright law has on innovation and technology.
The in-class research activity has students work in groups, using the Law and Technology Timeline to guide research into technologies like the VCR, record albums, peer-to-peer file sharing software, etc. The Technology History Worksheet asks students to identify the key attributes of their assigned technologies and to consider how each technology empowered users in ways that copyright holders found to be counter to their interests. The student groups are encouraged to report their research findings in class, and pairs of groups are encouraged to talk about how their technologies are similar and different. The following notes may be helpful in leading the students to discuss the controversial aspects of the technologies.
Technology comparisons:
For homework, students will be introduced to the modern copyright debate by representing a particular group (assigned by the educator), researching the group's opinions and arguments, and answering questions from the Stakeholders Worksheet. This will help prepare students for later assignments leading up to the mock trial in Lesson 5.
Assign each student a present-day interest group from the second page of the Stakeholders Worksheet and have that student assume that group's perspective on the question of music downloading and filesharing. Students' research should focus on the following issues for sharing with the class at the beginning of the next session:
Students will hand in their Copyright History Worksheets at the beginning of class and the Technology History Worksheets at the end of class.
In this lesson, students will focus on defining the concept, purpose, and impact of fair use in U.S. copyright law. Students will refine their understanding of fair use through the lens of the increasingly popular remix culture of music, visual art, and video.
Recent advances in technology have led to the increased malleability of media like text, music, and video. Concurrent advances in the speed and flexibility of communication have resulted in the growth of "citizen media," where amateurs and regular citizens are making use of copyrighted content in the process of civic engagement. Meanwhile, others are using copyrighted content to build a culture of remixes and mashups — essentially multimedia collages — exercising a great deal of wit and creativity in the process.
As an exception to copyright, fair use has been a key to the freedoms individuals have in interacting online. Fair use permits individuals to do things that could otherwise be deemed illegal under copyright law — like using clips from a television show in a video produced to comment on a controversy related to the television show. The copyright statute codifies the following four factors in weighing whether or not the use of a copyrighted work is a fair use:
These four factors have been the basis for numerous court decisions about what is acceptable in art, commerce, and other areas where copyright law has an impact. You can find more explanation about these four factors in the Fair Use FAQ. Understanding the basics of fair use is critical to students' ability to make good decisions about what kinds of creation and sharing are legally protected — or not.
But learning about fair use is also an opportunity for students to encounter important civic concepts. For example, Congress codified several fair use principles in 1976, but those principles were based on, and have been further developed by, a series of important court decisions. This relationship between the statutes and the courts may provide a useful starting point for students to understand more about how law is made and developed.
Finally, because the question of whether a given work is protected by fair use usually depends on assessing the facts of the creation in light of the fair use "factors," a fair use inquiry is a great way for students to practice assessing facts, applying logic, and arguing for a particular conclusion — skills that they will exercise in the fair use mock trial in Lesson 5.
The article "Illegal Art" introduces students to the ambiguity facing artists that use the work of others in the process of creating a new work, often in an attempt to comment on the original.
The two online videos presented to the class are examples of "remix" videos that make changes to existing media for the purpose of creating a new creative work. You will lead the class in evaluating the videos with respect to the four fair use factors. The Fair Use FAQ gives a comprehensive overview of the fair use factors, but here are some additional notes to consider in applying the factors to the videos in the lesson:
MoveOn's "Stop the Falsiness":
This parody video, created by the political advocacy group MoveOn and film company Brave New Films, uses footage from Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" to make fun of the show and even MoveOn itself.
Purpose: The purpose of the original Colbert Report footage was to engage in one type of parody (varying according to the clip: environmental issues, for example). The purpose of MoveOn's remix video is to parody the Colbert Report and, to a lesser extent, parody MoveOn and raise awareness about its work. The clips are interspersed with commentary, creating a very different work from the original. Therefore, the second work is transformative, i.e., it changed the original into a whole new work, toward a different purpose. In addition, there is no evidence of commercial intent in the MoveOn remix video.
Nature of the Original Work: The original Colbert Report clips are creative. However, courts have held that this factor is less important when the second work is transformative.
Amount and Substantiality of the Copying: The MoveOn video uses a number of short clips. However, it takes no more than necessary to accomplish the transformative purpose.
Market Harm: The MoveOn video does not substitute for the original in any market — no one would watch this instead of the Colbert Report. Another argument in favor of its being decided to be fair use is that it is unlikely that the Colbert Report would have licensed use of the clips to parody the show itself. (Courts have held that market harm is particularly unlikely when a parody is involved, precisely because the creators of an original are unlikely to license for parodic purposes.)
"A Fair(y) Use Tale":
Purpose: The purposes of the original Disney footage vary by clip, but most were intended purely for entertainment. The purpose of the remix, "A Fair(y) Use Tale," is to educate viewers about fair use principles. Individual Disney works are combined in a new and creative (transformative) way to accomplish that purpose. The remix is noncommercial.
Nature of Original Work: The original Disney works are creative. However, courts have held that this factor is less important when the second work is transformative.
Amount and Substantiality of the Copying: The remix video takes a number of short clips from various sources. However, it takes no more than necessary to accomplish the transformative purpose.
Market Harm: The remix video does not substitute for the original Disney works in any conceivable market.
Remember to leave some class time to discuss the final project and to explain the Trial Guide that students are responsible for reading as homework.
Using the Trial Guide, students will begin to research, prepare, and write arguments for the mock trial of Walt Disney Studios v. Faden. Let them know that they should have fun and "dress the part" — encourage them to fully assume their legal roles.
Have students read the Trial Guide and begin research for the mock fair use trial of Walt Disney Studios v. Faden ("A Fair(y) Use Tale").
Students will hand in their Stakeholders Worksheets at the end of class.
Using the Fair Use FAQ handout as a guide, ask your students to create an original art collage that parodies or comments on a pop culture figure, celebrity or band. Their projects can be done either as a physical poster or digitally on a computer. Their collages must include at least three original images (e.g., original drawings or photos), three copyrighted (fair use justified) images and three public domain images. See the Public Domain FAQ for resources. Remind the students that the collage itself is not protected under fair use unless it meets the four factors outlined in the FAQ. Students can share their works with the class at the beginning of the next session.
In this lesson, students will examine the state of Internet file sharing and copyright law. Building on the homework exercise from Lesson 2, students will decipher the various players who have a vested interest in the heated peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing debate: technological innovators, the entertainment industry, lawyers, courts, educators, and, of course, the file-sharers.
The use of peer-to-peer networks to share music and movies has sparked tremendous controversy in recent years. The recording industry blames P2P file sharing for declining music sales and has responded with extensive advertising, lobbying campaigns, lawsuits against file-sharing companies, and, until recently, lawsuits against individual users of P2P software. After years of negotiation, authorized downloading sites have also emerged, such as iTunes. However, unauthorized file-sharing remains extremely popular. For example, one study found that one third of PCs in the world have Limewire (a popular file-sharing technology that has been targeted in lawsuits) installed. Users of P2P networks argue that the world has changed, that they should be able to use and share music without restriction, and that the recording industry needs to adapt its business models to new technologies. They point to the efforts of some musicians to use the Internet and P2P technologies to reach out to fans and market their works. (See, for example, the "pay what you want" model used by Radiohead for its recent album In Rainbows, or Nine Inch Nails' liberal licensing of its collection Ghosts I-IV.)
Given the heated debate, it is easy to forget that peer-to-peer technology itself is not illegal, nor is using the technology to make fair uses, to share copyrighted materials designated for sharing, or to share materials in the public domain. It is also easy to forget that we have been here before. As we learned in Lesson 3, new copying technologies often spark legal and political controversy as industries based on old technologies struggle to adapt. For example, movie industry representatives famously claimed that videocassette recorders would destroy that industry (former MPAA president Jack Valenti likened VCRs to serial killer "Jack the Ripper"), but in fact VCRs and DVDs opened up new business opportunities and brought new wealth to the industry.
A clearer understanding of the peer-to-peer debate will not only enable students to make informed decisions about their use of peer-to-peer software, but it will also give them a framework for understanding how emerging technology affects commerce, society, and culture – and how individuals can be impacted by the changes.
The main class exercise requires students to explore the viewpoints of the individuals involved in a true-to-life file sharing controversy.
The students should also be given a significant amount of time to work on the fair use mock trial conducted in Lesson 5. Keep the Trial Guide close at hand to help the students navigate their responsibilities. Be prepared to give the student groups extensive feedback on the Stakeholders Worksheets completed as homework for Lesson 2. Comprehensive feedback should help them make efficient use of class time to refine arguments in preparation for the mock trial.
A 12-year-old girl in Toledo, Ohio, receives an email from her Internet provider regarding a subpoena. She doesn't understand it, so she ignores it. One year later, her family is formally served with a lawsuit naming her mom as a defendant. The suit alleges that the mother, who was the ISP account holder, illegally downloaded 10 copyrighted music files from a file-sharing network and seeks damages for each song. The plaintiff record companies offer to settle for $6,000.
Students will finish their final trial arguments and questions and prepare for the mock fair use trial of Walt Disney Studios v. Faden ("A Fair(y) Use Tale").
Invite a local artist, writer, or musician to speak to your class on how the Internet and technology has impacted his or her artistic work. Also ask students in your class (or students in the school generally) who are artists/creators in their own right to comment on these questions:
Students will challenge their knowledge of copyright law and fair use and apply it as stakeholders in the legal drama of Walt Disney Studios v. Faden.
Use the Lesson Activities guide below to manage the length of each stage of the trial. Your preparation for the mock trial should include being familiar with "A Fair(y) Use Tale," the Fair Use FAQ, and the Trial Guide for the Educator, and you should consider making a short list of persuasive arguments you expect to see made by the students. As the "judge," be prepared to discuss the students' arguments in detail.
The following paragraph is a reprint of the notes from Lesson 3 that should be helpful for you in your role as "judge":
"A Fair(y) Use Tale":
Purpose: The purposes of the original Disney footage vary by clip, but most were intended purely for entertainment. The purpose of the remix, "A Fair(y) Use Tale," is to educate viewers about fair use principles. Individual Disney works are combined in a new and creative (transformative) way to accomplish that purpose. The remix is noncommercial.
Nature of Original Work: The original Disney works are creative. However, courts have held that this factor is less important when the second work is transformative.
Amount and Substantiality of the Copying: The remix video takes a number of short clips from various sources. However, it takes no more than necessary to accomplish the transformative purpose.
Market Harm: The remix video does not substitute for the original Disney works in any conceivable market.