Copyright matters!

It’s not just a nice thing. It’s not just a cute idea, that schools can choose to follow or not.

Copyright is FEDERAL LAW.

And violating federal law can be an extremely big problem.

As library people, we are often the ones who are responsible for guiding the rest of our colleagues across our parent organization in following the best copyright practices. So you very much want to make sure you are following copyright law.

The Houston Independent School District – the seventh largest school district in the country – just faced having to pay a $9.2 million judgement awarded in federal court.

Yes, that’s $9.2 MILLION DOLLARS.

Don’t let your school be the next headline for violating copyright laws!

Check out this excerpt below, from the Houston Chronicle, and click here to get the full story.

“In the winter of 2013, when the principal of Houston ISD’s Westside High School suggested making copies of colorful study guides recently purchased from a small Austin-area company, an English teacher responded that there was a “glaring disclaimer about copyright” at the bottom of the documents.

The teacher suggested the guides, which cost nearly $2,000 total, should be handed out during class and picked up before the final bell. But when the school’s principal brushed aside the copyright concerns, the teacher fell in line…

…The guide’s creator, DynaStudy, got the last laugh on Thursday, when a federal jury awarded the company $9.2-million after finding dozens of HISD employees repeatedly violated federal copyright laws pertaining to the guides. Jurors sided with DynaStudy on all counts following a seven-day trial, validating allegations that HISD staffers cropped out the company’s logo, hid copyright violation warnings and widely distributed the manipulated study guides to colleagues throughout the district….

…Lawyers for the district offered multiple defenses for employees’ actions throughout the lawsuit: Staffers were not aware of copyright violations; educators engaged in “fair use” of reproduced copyrighted work; improperly published material was immediately removed from the Internet; and DynaStudy provided inaccurate information when seeking federal copyrights.

However, jurors found HISD employees violated copyright laws hundreds of times over a decade, improperly using 36 study guides created by DynaStudy. In its lawsuit, the company described various methods of skirting copyright rules, often validating the claims with email exchanges or Internet postings made by employees.”