Week 8: Copyright

The issue of copyright in schools is a difficult one to approach, with the rise of the internet and the amount of material that is freely available copyright infringement is becoming more common. Many who infringe copyright law do not realise that they are doing so and may not actually mean to as most pieces of copyrighted work is free to use if it is for educational or self-study purposes. The most frequent breach of copyright law is the use of images that can be easily searched for and copied from internet search engines such as Google images. It is also due to the fact that some images published on the internet are free from copyright and that the author has given permission for their work to be used freely as long as they are credited as the owner of the work.

It is not only images that are protected by copyright law, any body of work that shows a degree of labour, skill or judgement is deemed to be covered and includes: written work, sound recordings, dramatic pieces and artistic works. However an idea cannot be copyrighted and the piece of work must be published in order for copyright law to apply to it. Within schools this may cause a problem as any work that a teacher produces for use within the classroom will become the intellectual property of the school rather than the teacher as they are working for the school as an employee and are therefore being paid to produce the work for the school.

The following websites will supply licenses for schools and other organisations to use copyrighted material for their benefit for a small fee and can also advise on whether or not the organisation may be in danger of breaching copyright.

The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA): http://www.cla.co.uk/
            provide schools with licenses to photocopying and reproduction of electronic and hard copy productions. They also have a fact sheet available for schools to use if they are worried about infringing copyright. http://schools.cla.co.uk/

 Educational Recording Agency (ERA): http://www.era.org.uk/
            operates a licensing scheme for schools that allows them to use protected material from television and radio programmes

The Design and Artists Copyright Society: http://www.dacs.org.uk/
            this organisation will provide licenses to allow schools to use work that has been copyrighted by artists and visual designers