How Media Literacy Educators Reclaimed Copyright and Fair Use
Media literacy educators make active use of copyrighted works in the practice of teaching and learning. They frequently use popular culture, mass media, digital media, or other artifacts that are not traditionally defined as educational media. In part because of several well-publicized cases in which severe penalties have been directed at individuals involved in file-sharing and because of the rise of licensed online multimedia products marketed directly to schools, a climate of fear about potential liability concerning the unlicensed use of copyrighted materials in education has been increasing among educators in higher education and K-12 schools. In response, media literacy educators in the United States are asserting their fair use rights. This paper describes the development of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which was created to articulate the consensus that exists among educators about the application of fair use to the practice of media literacy education. This code was developed through two research methods: interviews with 60 educators; and intensive four-hour focus groups with 150 K-12, university, and youth media educators in ten cities across the United States. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education identifies five principles that guide educators' decisionmaking about the application of fair use in education, including the use of copyrighted materials in teaching, the development and distribution of curriculum materials, student use of copyrighted materials in their own academic and creative work, and dissemination of student work.
