I had a teacher come to me and ask if I would make 31 copies of a popular movie soundtrack that she had bought. You can imagine the thoughts that went through my mind. But as the technology specialist in the school, and my job was to help her, I approached the situation in this manner.

First I asked what the copies were to be used for. She stated that she wanted to give them to her students to take home and place the music in their PowerPoint projects. She said that she had been told that if the music was used for teaching and education purposes, then she could use it.

Well, I am not sure of the copyright and fair use laws in other countries, and to be honest, I am still slightly confused when dealing with the US laws. But, I knew that is was not sounding good. The intention was good, but the process on getting the project done left some big holes in which copyright laws could unintentionally be broken.

I began by telling this teacher that I was happy to see that she was embracing the technology, specifically the new English Dept. mobile wireless computer lab. I then proceeded to explain to her that she was indeed correct in the assumption that the music could be used in a non-commercial educational school project. But the way she wanted to do it could cause problems.

She said that the students had begun the project in class, but some wanted to take theirs home and continue working on it there (we are fortunate in that most of our students have computers at home). She said that she found out that by the time the students downloaded a song or two from the CD and passed it on, only a few got to use it in the class.

I understood completely. My problem was that I had to make sure that this teacher was not turned off because of this obstacle and I wanted to help her.

I proceeded to print out a copy of the Technology & Learning Copyright Guidelines for Administrators (see attachment-Technology & Learning Copyright Guidelines for Administrators by Hall Davidson, and give it to her.

I then explained that if we made that many copies, and gave it to students to take home, we could not control their useage. They may play it in their CD players or i-Pods, in which case we would be contributing in breaking the copyright laws.

I then suggested that we create a copy and have her use the mobile lab one more day and pass the CD around. After the students finished with it, then we would keep it for her to use because copyright laws allow for the original owner to make a copy for personal use and keep the original in a safe place. This way, if the copy is scratched or broken, then the original can be recopied again, where if the original was passed around, and scratched, the music would be gone.

I also told her to explain to the students to delete the music from their hard drives after the project was complete.

That is what we did.