Donna Holinga

Lincoln School

Springfield, Illinois

This article provided information about how to determine which information was acceptable to use in publishing Internet sites. It basically points out that information used by instructors and students is covered by the "fair use" exception policy. Four factors should be considered when determining whether the "fair use" exception applies:

• whether the information is to be used for nonprofit educational purposes or for commercial gain
• the nature of the copyrighted work--music copyrights are more heavily restricted than are other types of materials
• the amount of the material used when compared to the entire work
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for the copyrighted work

The point was made that if there was any doubt as to the "fair use" exception applying one should write to the author or creator of the work to gain permission to use it.

I would address this issue with my students by encouraging them to restate information in their own words, rather than using those of the author. I would also encourage them to limit the amount of direct quotations they use in creating projects and to be sure to give credit to the originator of the material.

While this was a rather short article I decided to summarize it because I felt it made some good points about piracy which may make sense to students. The article pointed out how much time, energy, and grief goes into making software on the part of the developers. When software is pirated by others these developers lose money, and if they can not make enough money to expand and grow they will not be able to continue to keep up with changing technology and therefore will not be able to produce more software. The lack of new software would be extremely detrimental to those who use computers. In talking to students about software piracy I would help them see that it would be in their best interest to buy software instead of taking it. I would also appeal to their sense of fairness and make sure they know that software piracy is against the law.

Site updated: June 12, 1998

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the leading organizations which supports free speech of all kinds on the Internet. EFF was founded in 1990 and is a nonprofit, public interest organization based in San Francisco, California. This organization is re-launching a campaign against an Internet censorship bill and the Internet School Filtering Act. The first bill would ban the posting of any materials considered "harmful to minors" and the second act would require all federally funded libraries and schools to install filters to censor adult and child access to Internet connections. While the intent of the legislation is to protect children from pornography the EFF sees this as a violation of our right of free speech. They feel the filtering will not eliminated all sites that should be eliminated and will block sites which are not offensive and which contain valuable information. I feel all educators should be aware of pending legislation which will require schools to automatically eliminated certain materials from being used. I also feel we have a responsibility to predetermine what information our students will have access to. While, in general, I am oppose to limiting freedom of speech unless it is abusive or harmful to individuals, I do believe there are sites which are not appropriate to use in the classroom and which do not further the idea that the Internet is used as a tool for learning. Students are made aware of the restricted use policy in effect in my classroom and are made aware of the penalties for violating that policy before they are allowed to use a computer.

Site updated: June 15, 1998

This July 3, 1995, Time magazine article centered on the Carnegie Mellon University study which concluded that there is a great deal of pornography on the Internet, pornography sites are easy to get to and that pornography sites are extremely popular among Internet users. It is extremely distressing to parents and teachers that young children can gain access to these sites innocently, or at the least, easily. The availability of these sites is what is prompting the legislation mentioned in the article above. As educators we must be aware of the "dangers" that exist on the Internet and try to protect students from these "dangers." We must, also, continually foster the idea with our students that the Internet is a tool for research and learning and any other use of it while at school is not acceptable. We must guide students to use it correctly in our classrooms by bookmarking appropriate site or adding these sites to a school web page and by not allowing students to use search engines without adult supervision.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt is the senior editor for technology for Time Magazine. He has written 15 cover stories for Time and helped authored their web site.