The Ethical Question of Copyright Infringement

This week we dove deeper into plagiarism and copyright infringement in IT class. Copyright infringement is probably the largest crime in public schools and at daycare centers. I think back to my daycare program based in a church and recall getting worksheets every day. Since the books were not purchased, the center should have received permission to make copies or purchased a licenses for the copies of the worksheets. My question is, Is it illegal or just ethically wrong for a daycare center without the funds to purchase a license to make copies to teach the young children? This is a very tough dilemma. It is similar to seeing a dog suffering at the hand of it’s owner. Should you steal the dog and rescue him even though it is stealing? After digging deeper into this dilemma, I found an interesting concept called “fair use”. I found the following definition of fair use on Legalzoom (https://info.legalzoom.com/profit-vs-nonprofit-copyright-laws-fair-use-issues-20396.html); The “fair use” exception to copyright protection allows you to use a limited portion of a work copyrighted by someone else, as long as your use is for certain permitted purposes such as education, commentary, criticism, teaching, news reporting, scholarship, research or parody. I think in this case of having a preschool class size of 4-6 children, would that be considered limited? and it is education. As with any tax or other law, copyright infringement has it’s legal loophole called fair use. In this case, it also helps with the ethical question.