Case+27+Mr.+Trent's+Historical+Musical+Events

** Mr. Trentecosta is an eighth grade social studies teacher. He also is a music enthusiast and on the weekends he plays in two bands. He is always looking for exciting and fun assignments that will engage his students. In a recent assignment, he asked the students to download song lyrics from the internet that were related to a historical point and time in American history. The students were to put the lyrics into Wordle.net to create a word cloud. He also had them download the same song to put into a PowerPoint presentation. He is going to have the students' presentations looping on display at the middle school's exhibit night. Even though he is a musician himself and is aware of Fair Use issues, he figures downloading the music and lyrics is for educational purposes. Connecting the events and listening to how the song writer portrays the events in the music can create meaningful connections to the events. He believes it is a really good way to get his students to truly understand how and what took place in American History. Mr. Trentecosta’s assignment certainly will be engaging for his students but we need to look at several components of his assignment to determine if it falls under ``Fair Use”.
 * Mr. Trentecosta’s Music Download:
 * Commentary: **

The first part of the assignment is downloading song lyrics to put into a program that will form a creative display of the words. Creating a word cloud is modifying the original work and is serving an educational purpose so it can be considered fair use. Where students retrieve the song lyrics is another issue that could fall under the factor of a potential market or value of the copyrighted work.

The second part of the assignment is to download the song from the internet to put into a PowerPoint presentation. Although the assignment is for educational purposes, using the song in its entirety is not considered fair use. However, if a student has purchased a song, they have purchased the rights to play it which would be able to fall under fair use because they own it and it is for an educational purpose. So although Mr. Trent has created a project that students would enjoy he might need to revamp the assignment to make sure it is considered fair use.

Mr. Trentecosta's has broken the law of fair use by hurting the company trying to make sales. Even though it is for educational purposes, he has to follow the rules to fair use.