Table of Contents
ETHICS

Ethical Guidelines for Research  Copyright in an Electronic Environment  Fair Use in Multimedia

Ethical Guidelines for Research

Ethics are philosophical ideas about right and wrong. Doing the right thing and practicing good ethics when you research and write a school assignment really just boils down to one thing: giving credit where credit is due.

When you turn in an assignment with your name listed as the author, the reader just assumes that every word and every idea in your assignment originally came from your brain. That is, unless you tell the reader that somebody else thought up the quote or the idea.

Writers, musicians, and artists earn their living by selling the work they create based on the ideas they think up. If you quote a work or an idea but don’t say who created it, you are by default saying that it’s yours. Basically, you’re stealing.

There are a couple of fancy terms for this type of stealing. One is intellectual property theft and the other is plagiarism.

So, how can you develop your assignment without developing a criminal career? It’s easy: cite (give credit to) all the sources of your ideas. If the idea isn’t yours, just say where you borrowed it from. Borrowing is allowed, stealing is not.

Oh, by the way, citing your sources doesn’t just apply to text. It also applies to pictures, audio and video files, maps, charts, graphs, tables, and anything else you might include in your product that you didn’t originally create. For example, when the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Imma Be” sampled from Beyonce’s “Get Me Bodied,” the Black Eyed Peas had to give Beyonce credit. She was paid for the sample of her product and was given credit for it in the liner notes of the Black Eyed Peas’ album. If the Black Eyed Peas had not followed these rules, they would be in the wrong, and Beyonce could have sued them for stealing from her.

So, now, if you use “Imma Be” in a PowerPoint presentation, for instance, you have to cite the Black Eyed Peas as the song’s creators. Otherwise, you are, in effect, saying that you recorded the song. If you don’t cite them, will the Black Eyed Peas sue you? Probably not … but they could. More importantly, if your teacher discovers that you didn’t record the song but still presented it as if you did, you will have, in effect, stolen it, and you might fail the assignment for trying to pass off somebody else’s work as your own.

Realistically, your teacher probably knows you didn’t record “Imma Be.” But what about quotes, facts, statistics, pictures, and the other information you might include in an assignment? Well, the reader needs to know where you got each and every piece of information if you weren’t the one who created it. If you don’t include the sources, not only are you in the wrong but your chances of failing the assignment and being called a cheater and a thief are much greater.

So, to avoid all that nastiness, just give credit where credit is due. It’s as simple as that. Cite ALL your sources.

Copyright in an Electronic Environment

(Guidelines from Consortium of College & University Media Centers)

General Guidelines

  • Students may use portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works in their academic multimedia projects, with proper credit and citations. They may retain them in personal portfolios as examples of their academic work.
  • Students and teachers must include on the opening screen of their programs and on any printed materials that their presentation has been prepared under fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and are restricted from further use.
  • Educators may claim fair use for their own productions providing these productions are:
    o For face-to-face curriculum-based instruction
    o Demonstrations of how to create multimedia productions
    o Presented at conferences (but you may not share copies of the actual production)
    o For remote instruction as long as the distribution signal is limited
    o Kept for only 2 years
  • Fair use ends when the multimedia creator loses control of his product's use, such as when it is accessed by others over the Internet.

Fair Use Guidelines for Multimedia

 (From CCUMC)

Text
• Up to 10% of a copyrighted work or 1000 words, whichever is less

Poems
• Entire poem if less than 250 words
• 250 words or less if longer poem
• No more than 5 poems (or excerpts) of different poets, from an anthology
• Only 3 poems (or excerpts) per poet

Motion Media
• Up to 10% of a copyrighted work or 3 minutes, whichever is less
• Clip cannot be altered in any way

Illustrations
• A photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety
• No more than 5 images of an artist's or photographer's work
• When using a collection, no more than 10% or no more than 15 images, whichever is less

Music
• Up to 10% of a copyrighted musical composition, but no more than 30 seconds
• Up to 10% of a body of sound recording, but no more than 30 seconds
• Any alterations cannot change the basic melody or the fundamental character of the work

Internet
• Internet resources often combine both copyrighted and public domain sites; therefore care should be used in downloading any sites for use in multimedia presentations.
• Until further clarification, educators and students are advised to write for permission to use Internet resources and to be mindful of the copyright ramifications of including embedded additional links to that particular site.

Copying and Distribution Limitations
• Do not post multimedia projects claiming fair use exemption on an unsecured web site
• No more than 2 copies of the original production may be made
• Only 1 may be placed on reserve for others to use for instructional purposes
• An additional copy may be made for preservation purposes, but may be used or copied only to replace a use copy that has been lost, damaged, or stolen
• If more than one person has created the multimedia presentation, each principal creator may retain only one copy


Multimedia Presentations Citations
Educators and students must credit sources, giving full bibliographic information when available.
Educators and students must display the copyright notice and copyright ownership information if this is shown in the original source.
Copyright information for images may be shown in a separate bibliographic section unless the presentation is being used for distance learning. In this case, the information must be incorporated within the image itself (i.e. it must appear on the screen when the image is viewed).


ETHICS