Wes Fryer on Copyright and Fair Use

            Fryer’s chapter regarding copyright laws and fair use was very brief and easy to understand. It gave a great overview for someone who needs to understand the laws, but not every intricate detail of them. While I already had learned much of this information from the comic, Fryer’s book clarified the concept if Fair Use for me by specifying that it was a legal defense rather than a right. It was also interesting that the chapter touched on the idea of using Wikipedia as a way to show copyright details to students, as Wikipedia was always vehemently not allowed when I was in high school and middle school. In general, I did not learn a lot of new information from this chapter, but it clarified many of the problems I had with the other copyright assignment. I liked that this gave a useful and easy to understand overview of what I will need to know as a teacher.

            This chapter included on examples of how these copyright laws affect the classroom and how to avoid violating them. Like I mentioned, one of these ideas is to encourage students to look at image copyright information on Wikipedia. To me, this activity sounds effective because I hope to model these laws for my students in my future classroom. I think what will greatly affect how my students handle copyrights in my classroom is if they are educated properly. I hope that I will be able to educate my students and compel them to give proper credit to the owners of material or to avoid the use of materials made by others.