 | New Textbooks, New Media and Copyrights; What to consider when considering a purchase. |
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Is your school getting new textbooks? Want to maximize your purchase, while minimizing your costs? An issue that is quickly picking up more and more steam in the educational arena specifically deals with copyrights involved with new textbook purchases. More and more, publishers are using the interactive multimedia component as a selling point for why their product is above and beyond the competition. Textbooks on CD are being provided, Audio CDs in multiple languages are being provided, Interactive web page components and activities are integrated into the textbook, DVDs are being provided which harbor video content that enhances the textbook. Test generator CDs and much more. All these look and sound great when the sales person is going over them and saying "See how easy and exciting it is!"...but are these multimedia components really being utilized by educators? Do current copyright laws or licensing restrictions prohibit certain uses of the content which could inhibit instruction? Most publishers utilize the standard copyright (All rights reserved) which under current copyright, law would prohibit teachers and students from making and distributing electronic copies of images, text, audio, and video files published under such as copyright. Yet the need reaming and is growing for students and educators alike to have multimedia files such as images, text, audio, and video (of common file types) that can be copied, edited, manipulated, uploaded, downloaded, and incorporated into multimedia presentations and webpages to display and distribute for educational purposes. While I have found that publisher reps are willing to give a verbal 'OK' for this to occur during a sales pitch session, the issue can be a little more difficult when trying to get something in writing from the publishing company which allows others to create derivative non-commercial works of the content. Furthermore, assuming that everything is fine without obtaining written guidelines disclosing what is permitted and what isn't while perhaps easier, is not the safest way to proceed, and could save you, your students, your school, or your school division from facing unwanted copyright violations. If you are considering new textbooks, (which undoubtedly will harbor a number of multimedia components in addition to just the book), there are some important questions to consider and ask of publishers attempting to earn a bid. 1) Are teachers and students permitted to create non-commercial derivative works of any and all content either in the textbook, on an accompanying CD ROM, or on an accompanying website? 2) Are teachers/students permitted to scan textbook images, graphics, and text for use in multimedia presentations/webpages? 3) Are CD images, audio, video, and text documents allowed to be electronically copied and edited for use in multimedia presentations/webpage by teachers and students? 4) How can our school/division obtain a Creative Commons BY-NC license (explained at the bottom) regarding the content in textbooks, on CD/DVD or on websites created by your company? This issue will become more and more paramount as teachers utilize technology more frequently for: 1) class web pages and/or multimedia presentations that teachers create either for staff development or for student/parent information. 2) content that students can create, edit, and manipulate using software programs like Lectora, Image Blender, Audacity, Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia programs such as Dreamweaver and Flash, or Microsoft Office applications. A license that would allow for students and teachers to create derivative works is a Creative Commons BY-NC license, which stands for Non-commercial attribution, meaning that students and teachers would be permitted to copy and edit any files as long as credit is given and there is no financial gain to be made from the new work. More information about creative commons licensing can be found at: http://creativecommons.org or more specifically... http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses Sean Rugge - Sean Rugge is an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher in Virginia, his work is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. - This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. |
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