CreativeRights

Creative Rights Copyright Curriculum—Age 12 and Up Teaching Standards (Fill in the blank) Learning Goals (Fill in the blank)

Activities

1. Teacher tells class about how art in US law is considered a ‘creative work’.
2. Teacher outlines the different types of work classified as ‘creative’ and goes over the criteria.
3. Teacher then guides class through the making of a creative work. This creative work can be solo or group created. It can take 15 minutes or 5 days. The creative work can take any form (poetry, essay, picture, photo, film, video, sculpture, music, advertisement, other)

Copyright and Creative Rights

1. Teacher introduces the term “copyright”.
2. Teacher explains how copyright protects creative works. Teacher explains the limits and exceptions of copyright.
3. Teacher has class imagine how they’d feel if they had to give up their creative work after 14 years (length of time copyright initially covered) and then has the class imagine how they’d feel after 30 years; and then finally class considers 75 years—the current length of copyright protection.

Public Domain

1. Teacher explains the concept of “public domain” as one reason why it is good that copyright protection has limits.
2. Teacher explains the limits and exceptions to public domain. Teacher has students find creative works in the public domain that relate to the creative work the students have made.
3. Teacher encourages students to find ways to incorporate their findings into their creative work.

Transforming Media

Teacher asks class what they should do if they find copyrighted work that they want to use in their creative work.

1. Teacher explains that students have two choices: they can ask for permission from the copyright holder or they can attempt fair use.
2. Teacher explains the term “fair use”.
3. Teacher explains that one of the most important principles of fair use is transformation.
4. Teacher has students find copyrighted work that relate to their creative work. •Teacher challenges students to “transform” the copyrighted work into their creative work.
5. Class then votes on how well each student/group has transformed the copyrighted material.
6. Teacher explains that Fair Use is actually more complicated than transformation . . . and introduces the 8 questions that you must ask yourself to pass the Fair Use test.
7. Students then apply the fair use test to other students work.
8. Teacher asks students what they think about Fair Use---Is it Easy or Hard?
9. Teacher says that if students want to share their work with others—and avoid other people having to navigate fair use questions, they can consider creating an alternative license, called creative commons.
10. Teacher shows Creative Commons videos. Teacher explains the different licensing choices, and has students go to the creative commons website to make an imaginary license.
11. Teacher has students consider their creative work: will they use the public domain image they found; will they use the copyrighted image they found; will they choose to license their work under creative commons or will they choose to keep the default copyright license.
12. To complete the learning activity, students create a description of their creative work; they discuss the public domain and copyrighted work that they considered; and they explain what license they choose and why.