Fair Use and Education

Fair use is the use of limited portions of copyrighted works. With today's technology, it is hard to distinguish what is considered to be fair use or violation of copyrighted works. For example, if a teacher was to purchase a digital copy of a literature ebook and then distributed to each of her students, would that be considered fair use? The teacher did purchase the ebook and is using it for educational purposes, not for economic gains. Others would say that each student should buy their own ebook because the teacher's purchase was only for one copy of the ebook. Another interesting, yet related, example is if showing the class a Disney movie is considered to be a violation of copyrighted works? Wouldn't the same issue happen if one were to buy the Disney movie and show it to family members? Would they all then need to pay for the movie? I understand that another aspect of copyrighted works, such as DVDs is that when it is purchased, it can only be used for private viewing. Since classrooms only consist of a few students, would it still be okay to show the movie? It's not like the movie will be shown to every person that walks into the classroom.

Another aspect of fair use is that the limited portions used is only for viewing purposes. The original idea(s) of the copyrighted work should not be duplicated for economic gains. However, what if the fair use portions inspire students to create related works? While the students may not be thinking about selling their works, they've still made a work that is almost exactly the same as a copyrighted work. Then, should students not be encouraged to practice these types of "unethical" assignments where you use a copyrighted work as an example for certain ideas? As a conclusion, there is always to argue whether not a copyrighted work has been violated or used as fair use, but teachers need to be aware of the law and try their best to not violate it.