5 ms·

> A good example is that a teacher can use a private/school photocopier to make 30 copies of material for classroom use according to fair use I disbelieve that

> A good example is that a teacher can use a private/school photocopier to make 30 copies of material for classroom use according to fair use I disbelieve that this is the case, for copyrighted material; this is not supported by your citations, and that behavior (30 copies in a classroom) seems like a flagrant violation, in fact, and although most teachers wouldn't generally get in trouble with it, most teachers also tend to steer clear of violations like this. A teacher either obtains permission, or uses public domain materials, or finds some other way to convey the information to their students. In fact I researched this when I was teaching a class, and I wanted to use some copyrighted handouts. I was able to obtain permission from a local blogger to use her article and distribute it to the whole class. In fact, she was very glad that I'd asked. I was less successful in contacting a publishing house overseas and obtaining permission for their stuff. So I didn't copy it.

omniglottal 3y ago
Seems like a flagrant violation - yet the actual law disagrees, and you have more rights than what the required library copyright warning implies, from which the majority of our population's learns of "fair use"... perhaps there's a correlation?
bscphil 3y ago
Fair use is generally understood to be more flexible when it comes to educational purposes, but it doesn't extend as far as communicating a complete copy of a work. For example, you can't upload a PDF version of a textbook to your class's group website. I don't think this contradicts the parent to your comment. There are cases where a teacher can make 30 copies of a portion of a copyright work for distribution in the classroom, and the comment is about those cases.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  > There are cases where a teacher can make 30 copies of a portion of a copyright work for distribution in the classroom, and the comment is about those cases. False, the comment is not about "a portion" of a work, it's about the whole work. I would certainly agree that an educator could photocopy a few paragraphs of a novel, or a textbook, or anything basically, if that work was 300 pages long, and that educator would be within his rights to distribute it to 30 students. A few paragraphs of a 300-page work is a negligible portion when considering copyright. My personal examples were very definitely about reproducing the works in their entirety. The blog post was about a page and a half, so with permission, I had no trouble making it a handout. The other documents were of comparable length, and it would not have worked to use excerpts. I really wanted the work in its entirety for my students to understand the topic. If an educator copied a full page of a one-page handout and distributed it to 30 students, they would definitely be in violation, as that is a reproduction in full, and not fair use at all. Ask any news aggregator site how much of a news article they are allowed to quote. They can't scrape the entire article from a website, they need to selectively quote from it so that it is a minimal portion of the copyrighted work. Percentages matter here. The GP didn't even address that question.
  - joshuamorton 3y ago
    > False, the comment is not about "a portion" of a work, it's about the whole work. The comment doesn't actually specify whether the "material" is a portion or a whole work. It is perfectly plausible that the comment is about those cases.
    - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
      I hope you'll agree that it's a very, very different situation if a teacher makes 30 photocopies of 1 page of a 300-page book, vs. if he makes 30 photocopies of a 1-page poster, with intent to distribute those to students. It is perfectly plausible that the original comment, in referring to "material" was implying the former, but it made no distinction about the latter, and the devil's in the details, as they say.
pwg 3y ago
> I disbelieve that this is the case, for copyrighted material; The blog post provides this link to section 107 of the US Copyright code: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 And, in the text of the statute is the following: > Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. The above was also quoted by the blog itself. The actual statute says "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords ... for purposes such as ... teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use) ... is not an infringement of copyright.". So the statute explicitly details that the statement by the GP is correct. That making multiple (meaning more than one, 30 being more than one) copies for classroom use for the purpose of teaching is actually "not an infringement of copyright".
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
  You all seem to be willfully ignoring a very significant provision of the statute! > (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and Now as I said, one page of a 300-page text is not infringing and is definitely fair use. If a teacher makes 30 copies of all 300 pages of a 300-page book, what do you think? Fair use too? Ridiculous. The whole text of the law applies, not just the bits you are willing to cherry-pick here. Every YouTuber knows that fair use often depends on what percentage of the work has been reproduced.

omniglottal 3y ago

Seems like a flagrant violation - yet the actual law disagrees, and you have more rights than what the required library copyright warning implies, from which the majority of our population's learns of "fair use"... perhaps there's a correlation?

bscphil 3y ago

Fair use is generally understood to be more flexible when it comes to educational purposes, but it doesn't extend as far as communicating a complete copy of a work. For example, you can't upload a PDF version of a textbook to your class's group website. I don't think this contradicts the parent to your comment. There are cases where a teacher can make 30 copies of a portion of a copyright work for distribution in the classroom, and the comment is about those cases.

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
> There are cases where a teacher can make 30 copies of a portion of a copyright work for distribution in the classroom, and the comment is about those cases. False, the comment is not about "a portion" of a work, it's about the whole work. I would certainly agree that an educator could photocopy a few paragraphs of a novel, or a textbook, or anything basically, if that work was 300 pages long, and that educator would be within his rights to distribute it to 30 students. A few paragraphs of a 300-page work is a negligible portion when considering copyright. My personal examples were very definitely about reproducing the works in their entirety. The blog post was about a page and a half, so with permission, I had no trouble making it a handout. The other documents were of comparable length, and it would not have worked to use excerpts. I really wanted the work in its entirety for my students to understand the topic. If an educator copied a full page of a one-page handout and distributed it to 30 students, they would definitely be in violation, as that is a reproduction in full, and not fair use at all. Ask any news aggregator site how much of a news article they are allowed to quote. They can't scrape the entire article from a website, they need to selectively quote from it so that it is a minimal portion of the copyrighted work. Percentages matter here. The GP didn't even address that question.
- joshuamorton 3y ago
  > False, the comment is not about "a portion" of a work, it's about the whole work. The comment doesn't actually specify whether the "material" is a portion or a whole work. It is perfectly plausible that the comment is about those cases.
  - NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
    I hope you'll agree that it's a very, very different situation if a teacher makes 30 photocopies of 1 page of a 300-page book, vs. if he makes 30 photocopies of a 1-page poster, with intent to distribute those to students. It is perfectly plausible that the original comment, in referring to "material" was implying the former, but it made no distinction about the latter, and the devil's in the details, as they say.

pwg 3y ago

> I disbelieve that this is the case, for copyrighted material; The blog post provides this link to section 107 of the US Copyright code: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 And, in the text of the statute is the following: > Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. The above was also quoted by the blog itself. The actual statute says "the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords ... for purposes such as ... teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use) ... is not an infringement of copyright.". So the statute explicitly details that the statement by the GP is correct. That making multiple (meaning more than one, 30 being more than one) copies for classroom use for the purpose of teaching is actually "not an infringement of copyright".

NoZebra120vClip 3y ago
You all seem to be willfully ignoring a very significant provision of the statute! > (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and Now as I said, one page of a 300-page text is not infringing and is definitely fair use. If a teacher makes 30 copies of all 300 pages of a 300-page book, what do you think? Fair use too? Ridiculous. The whole text of the law applies, not just the bits you are willing to cherry-pick here. Every YouTuber knows that fair use often depends on what percentage of the work has been reproduced.