Fair Use

In order to define "fair use," we must look at the laws first because everything is depended on the laws. Basically the video posted by professor Bigsby that we watched is an example of fair use. It is such because since the beginning the purposes of its usage are clearly stated: criticism, parody and news. The material is modified by Eric Faden. The fact that Eric Faden states his purposes and recognizes the rights of the author,then the material becomes a "fair use." Education needs to use a lot of materials which are produced by different creators, so in order to use them accordingly, I believe that the rights of the author must be always recognized. Teachers must always reveal their purposes clearly and make sure that the material has permission to be shown publicly. There are instances when teachers may need to request purchases of various educational materials becuase that is the only legal way to use those materials.There are a lot of useful materials which can be also found on different public domains and those materials could be used as well for educational purposes. In those cases, teachers must do so. We all know that there exist a lot of "pirate websites" out there and often teacher purposefully or unpurposefully fall for them, but unfortunately that is still a violation of the copyright. Once I had a teacher who was using a software called Lime Wire and downloading music so he could show it to us in class. That was clearly an illegal action which totally violated the laws and was not a fair use.There is still more left to be done about strengthening the protection of the rights of the author.