Until something is proven illegal, assume it’s legal.

As a result, there are intellectual property laws that are so routinely ignored that they have become meaningless—and enforcing them makes librarians appear to be martinets.

Making free copies of copyrighted online materials and passing them out to students, downloading digital videos (such as YouTube’s) onto a local hard drive, and converting analog materials to digital formats to be used with an interactive whiteboard or slide-show software for whole group instruction are all regularly done by teachers. These uses have either no or minimal impact on a copyright holder’s profits. Overly strict enforcements of the letter of copyright laws will lead to creating scofflaws of not just students, but teachers, and make all copyright restrictions suspect.

At issue is whether the material has been used to help create something new, or merely copied verbatim into another work. When taking portions of copyrighted work, ask yourself the following questions: Has the material you have taken from the original work been transformed by adding new expression or meaning?Was value added to the original by creating new information, new aesthetics, new insights and understandings?