Gaining more knowledge about the copyright law


Following through week 2’s learning path activities for EDC3100 meant that I had to come to terms with what the copyright law really means.  What I understand and know about the copyright law is that it gives ownership to the creator over the things that they have created including music, stories and photographs etc and is utilized in order to prevent a person’s original work from being used without authorization.  This ownership gives the owner the right to replicate their work, to perform and distribute their work and exhibit their work to the public.  These rights mean that no one else can infringe these laws unless you have a Creative Commons License and give these rights up to another person voluntarily (Commonwealth of Australia, 2005).  Some interesting websites, which I found educative and helpful can be found here and here.  These websites contain information on the copyright laws within Australia.

After doing some further research on the copyright laws and reading Sarah Jensen’s blog titled ‘Copyright Misconceptions’ I too had to come to terms with the fact that I have also broken the copyright law and this is not something that I want to make a habit of.  Especially since I want to be a positive role model to young children in my role as a future teacher.  This mistake has shown me how easy it can be to break the copyright law without even realizing it.  As a result of this I want to ensure that now and into the future I do not break the copyright law in anything that I do.

When I first started my degree I was asked to make a YouTube video derived around a topic of my choice that may occur in the school environment such as bullying and unbeknownst to me I added some music to my YouTube video that contained the copyright logo.  This meant that the legal rights to this music was given to the creator of this music and I had not been authorized to use it.  The positive side to this story is that luckily I realized my mistake very quickly and found a website where you could add music to a YouTube video that hadn’t been labelled as copyright.  Thankfully I did this before I posted it online.

Before I wrote this post I read a post on Miss Galea’s blog titled ‘Copyright…a Dirty Word.’  This post can be found here.  In this post Miss Galea points out some interesting questions that include why are we not better educated on the copyright laws? how can we be allowed to break a copyright law without even knowing we have and why do we allow our children to do it?  These are all important questions that need to be addressed.  Perhaps since education is leading towards a more ICT based learning arena that we as future teachers need to look at educating ourselves, other teachers and education faculty as well as the students that come into our classrooms and their parents on the copyright laws to ensure that the illegal act of breaking a copyright law does not occur.



Commonwealth of Australia.  (2005).  Copyright Law in Australia.  Retrieved March

11,2016, from



Copyright logo [Image].  (2012).  Retrieved from



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