Teacher Discussion Forums

copying and distributing a short story or essay (from a book or anthology or compilation - not sure if the specific source is relevant to the question or not) for students in a class?

Thanks,

Donna

Since ESL things often come with the smallprint that they can be legally distributed in class, I suppose that normal published materials cannot be.

Who cares though? The police aren't looking.

Depends where you are. A teacher I know copied a poem and the author's son, a student of hers, took it home. She lost her house in the lawsuit.

Since ESL things often come with the smallprint that they can be legally distributed in class, I suppose that normal published materials cannot be.

It wasn't actually an ESL question, it was a plain ol' middle shool English question. I do not know what you mean by the smallprint that is on ESL materials vs. normal published materials. What is smallprint? The little italicized blurb at the bottom that says where the poem/story was copied from along with copyright info.?

Who cares though?

I do. I'm kind of curious. I suppose I'll be informed about this if it is a major issue when I get to the classes in the credential program that deal specifically with my subject matter, but I don't think it's wise to rely on teaching credential school for this piece of information.

Sally Olsen wrote:Depends where you are. A teacher I know copied a poem and the author's son, a student of hers, took it home. She lost her house in the lawsuit.

I have never heard of this happening, but it kind of crossed my mind. How can it not?

Where I am is in California. Why does it matter where one is at? Is it the difference in copyright laws from state to state or country to country?

How then does one copy poems and short stories from regular books checked out from public libraries?

It's not just about covering myself, though that's a big part of it, it's about being fair to the artists as well. And, I'm just plain curious how it all works.

I think it varies from country to country and who has time to pursue these things.

I think you can copy something for yourself and your students can copy for themselves but you can't make a mass copy for the whole class or all your classes. It might be easier to make a copy to go on the overhead projector if you have one.

You can write to the author to get permission to make copies. My university profs do that to make up packages of papers for the course. It doesn't take as long as it used to with being able to email the author.

I guess that is why so many teachers use textbooks because this has been done for them and every student has the same material.

This looks good for an explanation:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html

If you want the students to read something different you could just refer them to it and highly recommend it.

Sally Olsen wrote:I think it varies from country to country and who has time to pursue these things.

I think you can copy something for yourself and your students can copy for themselves but you can't make a mass copy for the whole class or all your classes. It might be easier to make a copy to go on the overhead projector if you have one.

You can write to the author to get permission to make copies. My university profs do that to make up packages of papers for the course. It doesn't take as long as it used to with being able to email the author.

I guess that is why so many teachers use textbooks because this has been done for them and every student has the same material.

This looks good for an explanation:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html

If you want the students to read something different you could just refer them to it and highly recommend it.

I see. Thank you