Giving students a basic understanding of how copyright and fair use work together to encourage creative work is essential for several reasons.

Basic Student Competencies

Students today grow up with powerful technologies at their fingertips from very early ages. Through these technologies, they experience digital worlds where they access, share, and generate their own creative work. This highly connected environment creates an immediate, practical need: Students need to know the rules of the road in these digital worlds, and copyright and fair use are an important part of the law.

The Future of Creativity

Beyond the students’ immediate needs, the future of creativity will be affected by how we choose to interact with creative work. We all want encourage great new books, music, games, movies, and art for everyone to enjoy. To keep creativity flowing in a world where copying and distributing are so easy, we look to copyright. Technology doesn’t just make it easier to copy—it also makes it easier to create, and we want our own creations respected.

The Future of the Internet

How we interact with each other online is also important to the future of the Internet. Noted Internet and civil liberties expert, Jerry Berman recently explained: “In order for the Internet to function as a free and open entity, we need citizens to choose to live ethically in their digital environments.” We all benefit when we connect online ethics with the benefits of existing in an online world where people choose to play fair. Helping students understand the civic boundaries we agree to abide by as we interact in digital spaces will give them an ethical edge as they make creative work themselves and as they use others’ works.