A little reminder of copyright…

I was recently asked to clarify copyright laws and district policy (currently under our Acceptable Use Policy) when creating classroom/sports memorabilia movies/DVD’s.   If teachers and/or coaches use copyrighted music, (whether it has been purchased from sites like iTunes or downloaded from purchased CD’s) then the final works cannot be copied and distributed to students and families (without the owner/publisher’s permission) under copyright law.  Using music for this purpose does not qualify for Fair Use.

Copyright for Kids does a good job of how to ask permission from record companies to use all or portions of music in these productions.   However, I find this somewhat tedious and time consuming especially since permission must be asked of each song used. There is no guarantee you will have proper permission to use these works in a timely fashion to distribute your copies.

But what is an educator to do? I would encourage you to look for background music under the Creative Commons.  This is a fairly new set of copyright licenses in which authors and creators of content determine how their works are to be shared on the Internet. (Versus you having to seek permission)  Please click the video below to help you understand how Creative Commons works.

To learn more about the specifics of these  licenses please visit the Creative Commons About Licenses website.  Below are several sites in which you can look for music to use in your videos.

To learn more about the law and the use of music in educational multimedia presentations, please look at the University of Texas’s Fair Use Guidelines For Educational Multimedia.  I think they do a very good job interpreting the law under fair use.

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