Copyright Basics

After we discussed the issue of copyright, I found that there was not one, single, specific issue that surprised me. The most surprising to me was definitely the fact that there are so many "if" clauses to the entire process. There seem to be so many little exceptions to the rules of copyright that it is like walking on egg shells. While I do not have any teachers that I have ever witnessed breaking copyright rules, I do feel that if they had broken any rules, they might have been completely unaware that they were committing any sort of crime.
I absolutely think it is the teacher's responsiblity to teach the students about copyright laws. Plagarism is a key word that they are going to have to be well aware of as they get older and copyright falls directly into that category as well. I believe that understanding copyright laws falls under the subject of citizenship. By showing children how to give proper credit where proper credit is due, they will learn to respect the hard work and effort of people throughout their community and world. It is important that the educator is well versed in copyright laws because the students need to be taught accurate information. If you have a teacher who knows nothing at all about copyright laws and they try to teach students about them, it will just lead to another confused generation of people.
As an educator, I will definitely try to use the correct rules in my classroom. I might do things such as contacting a website owner before I use the materials on their sight and making sure that if I need to photocopy pages for students, those pages do not come directly out of a workbook.