Week 9: Ethics and Legal Uses of Technology

This week's readings focused on copyright law and how it relates to fair use. Fair use is a term that talks about legal usage of an item that has been previously copyrighted. There are three rules that demonstrate fair use: 1. The nature of the work borrowed. 2. The amount you borrow. 3. It doesn't change the original work's market value. Copyrighted material can sometimes be used for educational purposes, but this and many other aspects of copyright law, is what falls into the gray area. 

In relation to education, I believe that many of these laws are being broken everyday in the schools and society. I remember watching movies in class as rewards. This, as I just found out, can be illegal if the rented movie was donated by the local video store. There are many ins and outs to copyright law, which is probably why it is a whole separate branch in the practice of law. I, however, have yet to understand why downloading songs is illegal. (Here comes my rant) If it is for my own personal use, I don't see what I'm doing wrong. I do understand that it is ethically wrong because the musicians lose money, but what I'm doing is downloading it from someone else, which is why I don't see it as wrong. If I bought the copy at a lower price from this person, then yes, I could see that as being illegal. It comes down to ethics vs. the law. Is it ethically wrong to not feed someone who is hungery? I think so, but how many of us, including myself, pass the homeless on the street asking for money without even looking at them? This is not illegal, but are we being ethically wrong? The same with downloading music. Is it ethically wrong? Yes. Is it illegal? Well yes, but I don't understand why. I do understand that as teachers, we must promote that plagerism and the illegal use of copyrighted matierial is a serious offense.

This is such a diverse and complicated topic, it seems that there should be an entire class dedicated to learning copyright law. I hope teachers learn about this information in their teacher workshops, because it is not taught in continuing education.