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Friday 7 September 2007

How copyright and privacy laws affect CALL

A current topic brought up this morning was what roles copyright laws play in CALL and how they are viewed by CALL practitioners. Neil Heffernan used Japanese and American practices as examples. He presented the results of an online survey which investigated teachers’ knowledge and attitudes when producing CALL-material.

Although Japanese laws are more complex than American ones, the American laws are also very unclear. It turned out that very few were familiar with the applicable copyright laws. To the crucial question: “When creating CALL materials and being unsure of copyright laws what do you do?” the highest response from most teachers was “Make own decision according to my existing knowledge of the laws”. Second came “investigate on the Internet or in the library”. The conclusion was that it’s confusing as to what is covered under the law.

3 comments:

Graham Davies said...

Have a look at the Web page that I have created at the ICT4LT website: General guidelines on copyright at
http://www.ict4lt.org/en/en_copyright.htm
It relates mainly to the UK situation and there are numerous links to other sites on copyright.

Andrea Rizzi said...

An article (written by us) on copyright issues in Australia and US has just been published in Eurocall Review:
http://www.eurocall-languages.org/news/newsletter/12/index.html

Andrea and Matthew

Unknown said...

Lily Compton compiled a brief list of resources on US copyright law and fair use for teachers in a 2006 piece that appeared in TESOL's Essential Teacher: http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/secetdoc.asp?CID=1222&DID=5722

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