In both instances, however, I believe this would violate both the spirit as well as the letter of the law: not for educational use (unless, perhaps, the song was one of the numerous ones out there relating to math or science or other ‘geeky’ topical material); non-transformative; not performing critical analysis of the subject; etc.

However, one should look into specific licensing situations for each school (or district). For example, here in BC, we are covered by a Province-wide agreement with SOCAN that allows us to do this very thing with copyrighted music (as well as play background music in schools, etc.). While we do not have an exemption under our Copyright Act, we do have secondary licensing in place to allow it. Many tariff collectives (such as RIAA in the US) are willing to work with schools to allow derivative and non-transformative works, as long as they are intended for audiences WITHIN the shcools- this may prohibit you from posting these works to Youtube, but you can distribute them within your organisations via intranet or sneakernet (physical discs).

With regard to Creative Commons works being used, it’s simple: check the CC license being applied to the work. If it allows non-commercial, by attribution, simply attributing the Flickr user’s name under the photo (or at the end of your slideshow) will meet the requirements. If they allow derivatives, you can alter the photo to meet your own requirements (crop, colour adjustment, etc). Educational uses fall clearly under non-commercial, so you don’t need to worry about that.

I agree with Mathew about Youtube being a grey area in terms of copyrights. One interesting thing to note is that their TOS allows you to use stuff posted on the site for pretty much any purpose, as long as you’re using Youtube’s interface (ie, embedding the video in your own site is allowed, as is streaming it directly to your audience in a presentation). This means that if a studio uploads content (say, music videos, for example), you can use it- they have agreed to Youtube’s TOS ahead of time. Infringing content (that being illegally uploaded) is indeed a grey area, and I’d try to stay away from it- although you wouldn’t technically be infringing copyright if you played such clips, as the onus is on the uploader, not the viewer, to ensure proper usage. Still, be a good example to the kids, eh?

I would agree that the posting of this video on the internet is not fair use (while using it as an in-class editing assignment probably would be fair use).

However, youtube is kind of the equivalent of the wild west in terms of copyrights. As they’re finding ways of monetizing copyright materials for themselves as well as for the original copyright holders (selling songs featured in videos, for example) I’m not sure that the dust has settled enough to say that posting the video there is wrong.

I have some problems with the video from a purely creative standpoint. Is showing a picture of a present tied up with string to accompany a lyric, “tied up with string” all that creative?

If this was a commercial for Pepsi we would certainly expect the ad agency to pay for the song.

I know there is a page of html code but I do not know how to use that on a powerpoint slide. Thanks