Good Morning Miss Moral?

     Most of us out there consider ourselves to be upstanding citizens, I’m sure. Moral beings. Good people. Followers of the law. But… are we?

     A moral dilemma that presents itself to teachers regularly is that of copyright.

     Miss Lydia Coulson poses a relevant question in her blog post; “Why do the generation of today feel that it is ok to steal software when we are completely against stealing physical goods?”

     I’m sure part of the problem is that when you are doing it, it doesn’t feel like stealing. You don’t look over your shoulder to see if anyone is watching. You don’t sneak it into your bag. You just do it, from the comfort of your own home or classroom.

     One difficult thing about this ethical dilemma, is that we usually don’t break copyright just for the sake of it. Especially as teachers, we feel that from time to time with education being the greater good, the end outweighs the means. Our guest lecturer posed us with a challenging thought; shouldn’t we be presenting ourselves as upstanding people in every aspect of our lives, as a model for our students?

     Part of the solution might be education for teachers. There are almost always ways to find what you need, in a way that doesn’t break copyright laws. Why not try to search for images that have Creative Commons licenses on Flickr? Or Google one of the many sites that offer royalty free images? Is there any open source software that you can use instead of copying licensed software? Chances are, there are.

Thanks to Flickr for Image: 'Sneaking out' 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9674912@N07/3177929150