Copyright and Fair Dealing

Digital Literacy and Online Safety (Y8) - Lesson 6

A note about this lesson

This lesson is taken from Common Sense Education’s excellent Digital Citizenship curriculum. Their resources are shared for free under A Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

You can find the original resources HERE.

Objectives

Define the terms copyright, public domain and fair dealing.
Identify the purpose of the four exceptions of fair dealing.
Apply fair dealing to real-world examples, making a case for or against.

Lesson Resources

Digital Literacy and Online Safety (Y8)

Lesson 1 - My Media Use: A Personal Challenge

Lesson 2 - Big Big Data

Lesson 3 - The Power of Digital Footprints

Lesson 4 - My Social Media Life

Lesson 5 - Upstanders and Allies

Lesson 6 - Copyright and Fair Dealing

Links to Education for a Connected World.

This lesson from Common Sense Media's Digital Citizenship curriculum links to the following strands from the Copyright and ownership section of the Education for a Connected World framework.

Warm-Up: Copyright and Fair Dealing

15 mins.

Note: This lesson contains videos hosted on YouTube and Vimeo. You may need to get permission to view them.

1. Ask: Imagine that you and some friends created a short stop-motion animated film. You wrote clever dialogue, designed the shots and worked on the footage on the weekends. You post the video on YouTube and people love it! One day, you see your film uploaded on someone's website. They wrote the caption, "Look at this cool stop-motion video!" But there is no mention of your name or your friends' names, and it's not linked to YouTube. How would you feel if something you had worked hard to create was being shared by other people without your name attached to it?

Invite volunteers to share their thoughts. Help learners connect their feelings to a shared definition of fairness: that when you work hard on something you create, you deserve credit for it. Emphasise that:

It's unfair but also illegal to use other people's copyrighted writing, music, pictures, videos or artwork without permission or citing them.
There are laws in place in the UK that protect your creative work. (Note: you get copyright protection automatically and do not need to apply for it.)

2. Distribute the Fair and Square handout and tell learners they will watch a short video and answer a couple of questions about it.

3. Show learners the Copyright & Creativity video (2:40) and give them 1-2 minutes to answer the questions on Part 1 of the handout:

What is copyright?
Why is copyright important?

Invite learners to share their answers and summarise their responses by defining copyright as the legal protection that creators have over the things they create. (Slide 4)

4. Explain that copyright does not last forever. In the UK, copyright in artistic works generally lasts for the lifetime of the creator plus 70 years after their death. After that, their work enters the public domain, which means creative work that's not copyrighted and free to use without permission.

Explore: Fair and Square

20 mins.

1. ProjectSlide 5 and say: There are specific circumstances when you are allowed to use someone else's work without their explicit permission. These exceptions are called fair dealing, which is "the circumstances in which copyrighted works can be used without permission from the copyright owner".

2. ProjectSlide 6 and explain that to know whether you are using someone else's work in a way that is fair, you can ask yourself: Is it fair… and square?

Say: To help you answer this question, we are going to look at four of the most common exceptions that are considered fair dealing. They are organised in a square to help you remember them.

3. Read aloud each of the descriptions on Slide 7 for the common exceptions that count as fair dealing. As you read them aloud, learners should fill in the blanks in their notes in Part 2 of the Fair and Square handout.

As needed, provide examples for each exception as you go through them:

Parody: You are making a video for your Aunt as she is turning 40. Your Aunt likes adventurous sports like skiing and skydiving, so you include lots of clips of stunts from James Bond movies and superimpose her face onto James Bond's face. You are sure this will get a lot of laughs at her surprise birthday party! Using the James Bond movie clips is not a copyright infringement as you are only using them for some good-humoured fun.
Study (non-commercial research and study): If you are writing a research paper and want to use a quote from an article or book to support your ideas, this is permitted under fair dealing as long as you provide a citation for the author/work. Using informational works such as news, magazines, scholarly books and articles for non-commercial research and study is also allowed under fair dealing.
Review or Criticism: You are making a video review about new films you have seen in the cinema. You include a clip of a film that you downloaded from Instagram and post your video on the school news Facebook page. The film clip can be fair dealing as it is relevant to your blog and the film is already available to the public.
- Note: It is an essential prerequisite of fair dealing for the purpose of criticism or review that the copyrighted work is available to the public (for example, by means of an authorised performance, exhibition, playing or showing of the work in public). If the copyrighted work is unpublished, or unavailable to the public, it cannot be fair dealing under the criticism or review exemption. For more information, see CopyrightUser.org.
Reporting: Your local leisure centre has been in the press recently due to a spate of vandalism. The local newspaper wants to interview you, as you are a young person who has been campaigning on social media, speaking out against the vandalism. You do a telephone interview, but when the article appears in the newspaper, the reporter has also included one of your photos. They have also used one of your videos of the vandalism (from your Twitter feed) on their website. They do not give you credit for the photo, and therefore this would not be fair dealing, as a photograph cannot be reproduced for the purpose of reporting current events. However, as the video is used for reporting current affairs, it would be considered fair dealing.

4. ProjectSlide 7 and read again the four common examples of fair dealing. Have learners capture the four examples on their handouts.

5. Say: Next, we're going to play a little game. Project Slide 8 and read the directions aloud.

Project Slide 9 and have a learner read aloud the example. After one minute, ask learners to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down and call on two people to briefly explain their thinking. Prompt learners to refer back to the four exceptions that count as fair dealing and ask: Is it fair ... and square?

Explain that this example probably isn't fair dealing because although Maya is only using part of the logo, it's for advertising and she plans to make a profit. Therefore it does not fall under any of the four fair dealing exceptions.

6. RepeatStep 4 for Slides 10-12. Use the answers below, but keep in mind that there's not a formula or clear-cut right or wrong answer for fair dealing:

Example No. 2: Not fair dealing. Learners are using the song for mood but not transforming or reworking the song in any way.
Example No. 3: Most likely fair dealing. Eva is critiquing and commenting on unrealistic expectations about appearance that some magazines promote. It could even be thought of as a parody.
Example No. 4: No, it is not fair dealing. But it is OK to use it in this example because the image is part of the public domain.

7. Summarise for learners by saying: Now you know about copyright, fair dealing and public domain. You applied four common exceptions to copyright to some examples. Next, we're going to explore an even more tricky example: music sampling.

Debate: Sampling or Stealing?

15 mins.

Note: This section includes a music video by DJ Earworm, which is composed of clips from other popular music videos. Review this video in its entirety before showing it to learners. If you are comfortable sharing only a segment of the video, feel free to do so.

1. Ask:Have you ever heard a song with a sample in it? Have learners respond with the song and, if possible, the original song that was sampled.

Define sampling as reworking a portion of a song or sound recording into a new composition. (Slide 13) Note that sampling is a foundation for hip-hop music in which drum breaks or other sounds are sampled, looped and rapped to. Explain that musicians often get permission from the original artist before they sample, or they use samples in the public domain … but not always.

2. Ask:Do you think sampling qualifies as an example of fair dealing?

Invite learners to respond. Help learners connect their ideas to the four exceptions of fair dealing: parody, study, criticism or review, and reporting. Explain that, as with any creative work that involves fair dealing, it depends on the situation.

3. ProjectSlide 14 and say: Let's look at one example of sampling to see whether we think it qualifies as fair dealing.

Read the bullet points aloud and explain that learners will watch the video and then work in pairs or groups to complete the graphic in Part 3 of their Fair and Square handout. Show DJ Earworm - Summermash 2020 video.

4. ProjectSlide 15 and read the questions aloud to support learners in completing Part 3 of their handouts.

Call on groups to share their "Final Decision" responses. Use the Teacher Version for guidance. (For fun, you can play judge and actually make a call as to whether or not you believe it's fair dealing.) Explain that there are valid arguments on both sides.

5. Summarise by explaining:

There is no statutory definition of fair dealing -- it will always be a matter of fact, degree and impression in each case.
When in doubt, the safest choice if you want to use copyrighted work is to get permission from the author. This means reaching out and emailing them, calling or writing a letter. It's also the responsible thing to do as a digital citizen as there is no statutory definition for fair dealing. You might be surprised by what they say!
But you also can also check whether the work falls under the four permitted exceptions for fair dealing. Whether you claim fair dealing or not, make sure to always give credit to the creator of the original work.

6. Collect the Fair and Square handouts to assess learning.

7. Ask learners to complete the Lesson Quiz, and send them home with the Family Activity and Family Tips.

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