Copyright, copyright, everywhere copyright

Beware of the copyright police! These phantom creatures stalk the halls of every school. Teachers shudder at the sound of their name as they scramble to hide their illegally photocopied resources and dubbed videos. Copyright issues are cause for concern when using video clips from sites such as YouTube or TeacherTube. While I have shown many clips in the classroom, I have also embedded clips into online course content in Moodle. Am I infringing on copyright when I do so? Upon asking a couple of experts in my division, I received varying responses. Our e-learning teacher recommended linking to sites rather than embedding them in Moodle as this would not infringe on copyright. She also stated that showing the entire class a Youtube clip at one time may violate copyright and you may, rather, need to have students view the clip individually at their own computer (that’s convenient in a school with one computer lab!). Not wanting to accept her response, I asked our division’s library coordinator. He simply gave me my own copy of Copyright Matters, every library coordinator's bible, and told me to make my own judgments. According to Copyright Matters,

Most material available on the Internet is protected by copyright.
This includes text (e.g., postings to newsgroups, e-mail messages),
images, photographs, music, video clips, and computer software.
Under the Copyright Act, reproduction and unauthorized use
of a protected work are currently infringements. Therefore,
reproduction of any work or a substantial part of any work on the
Internet would infringe copyright unless you have the permission
of the owner (p. 16).

So, perhaps the e-learning teacher was correct. This creates huge implications for the classroom and makes it substantially more laborious to use videosharing sites in the classroom. Also, without being able to imbed files into online courses, one can never be sure if the link will be there tomorrow.

There is however, hope for change. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada recently lobbied the government to make an exemption to the law for educational use. This would enable teachers to freely use Internet resources, including videosharing sites, without having to receive permission from the creator of the video. Until then, teachers will have to be creative with their use of videos from online sites in order to comply with Canadian Copyright Law. I guess I had better start pre-booking the computer lab now.