Whatever we can do to help teachers better understand copyright will be well worth the efforts.

Part of the issue at question was about taking a picture of the book cover and then using Flickr and Big Huge Labs Trading Card Creator, to make trading cards for elementary students. The idea was for students to collect trading cards throughout the year as they read recommended books and also record their thoughts about the book on a VoiceThread.

I researched the Amazon question thoroughly and as Amazon did not chime in on any of the places I saw this being discussed, it was suggested that they either have agreements with the publishing companies or that the publishing companies are not wasting time going after Amazon because they are selling them more books.

I found a VoiceThread created by a teacher that has students reading their favorite poems. I created a similar VoiceThread to use as an example for a librarian/teacher workshop. I was asked today if that is a copyright violation because it essentially republishes the poem online. There are not copies of book covers, just the person telling the title and author of the poem and then reading the poem. Any thoughts?

Also, you have to ask yourself what harm you are doing and why would publishers object? You are not taking sales away, in fact you are essentially providing free advertising for the book. I’d never heard of one of the books you mentioned, now I have because you put it on VoiceThread and reviewed it.

Again, the book review part is the key. If you were putting a narrative on VoiceThread and used a cover image to help illustrate your story then that technically wouldn’t be okay.

I would say that the VoiceThread stories are most similar to book reviews. Newspapers are certainly allowed to use book covers in printing reviews as these are for journalistic purposes. Your children’s VoiceThread stories are essentially book reviews and you are allowed to use excerpts for these.

You have to ask yourself why would someone—someone being the publisher—object to your use of the book cover? You’re essentially providing free publicity for the book. If you were printing T-Shirts with the book cover or simply reproducing the image just because you liked the image on your own web site, the publishers would have a valid reason to object.

P.S. I’m a big fan of a radio show in Los Angeles about entertainment law, these are the kind of questions that come up again and again. There’s a podcast of the show… http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=80145111

I have been involved in conversations with school librarians and teachers recently about “fair use” provisions of using copyrighted pictures of book covers in student multimedia projects. Some of these conversations have been documented in the following blog post, including comments:

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/?p=2220

Can you please fill me in on how Amazon.com is able to use pictures of book covers legally on your website? I am guessing this constitutes fair use, particularly when the predicted market effect of this use is positive for book sales. Is this correct? Any insight you can give on this would be most helpful. Thanks!

Wesley Fryer
Edmond, Oklahoma, USA

You are correct that Amazon.com’s use of book cover images is a major case in point. I’d love to know their position on this issue. Maybe I’ll email them and see what they can say officially about this?