Copyright and Fair Use

While reading The educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use by Hall Davidson ( http://umfresources.wikispaces.com/file/view/copy_guide.pdf/254864262/copy_guide.pdf ), I learned many new things about copyright.  In reading the introduction, the author actually encourages you to use as many resources you can and build off of the ideas of others, not pass them off as your own.  It goes on and talks about the special law of fair use.  This was created so that mainly school and other places may use intellectual property to benefit society as a whole.  It goes on the say that the exact definition of fair use was an ambiguous one and that there are no actually laws, just accepted "deals".  In my opinion, this is something that needs proper defining.  It seems sketchy to operate as an educator at the will of intellectual property owners.  I think this can actually favor the rights of intellectual property owners more because it is the educators taking all the risk.  If someone's property is being used in a way they don't like it seems like they can sue and educator or an educational system anytime they want.  This topic makes me wary as a future educator and more afraid of being the teacher someone makes an example of.  After reading all of this I took the quiz that was offered to see if i could really grasp the concept of fair use.  

Question three deals with a new version of Photoshop being installed in only five computers because thats the quantity the teacher bought and because it isn't backward-compatible they should be able to install it on all the computers.  I think a system like this would operate like Microsoft Word and be able to be compatible back to its previous version, but couldn't you just save in a rich text format or something and be able to open it acceptably?  Also, as the company I am providing a software to make money, so I would put a limitation of how many times the software could be shared because I would like to keep making money.  

Question four is relatable to three.  If a school doesn't have enough money to buy a new product for everyone they can't just buy it once and copy the rest for everyone.  Inventors deserve money for their work if thats what they want.  Again, I am sure there would only be a certain amount of times you could share the product before you run out of uses.  If you have 5,000 student and buy a software thats allowed to be shared five times each then you would only need to buy it 1,000, but you can't buy it once and share it 5,000 times, that's pirating. 

I also feel like question five deals with the same exact issues covered in three and four.  

Question seven is interesting to me.  It says that it's okay to use copyrighted material without permission because it's posted on a website they requires a password which only the teacher, students, and parents know.  This seems like the sketchy side of fair use to me.  You are using something copyrighted without permission, but it's okay because you are only distributing it for educational purposes.  How would any copyrighted material owner ever know their stuff was being used if all we did was create a website with a password required and shared it with everyone but the copyright owner and company?  Maybe I am missing something, but maybe not.  

Question twelve is another example of the murky waters of fair use.  Manufactures are putting blocking systems on DVD's and VHS's to prevent anyone from digitizing it themselves.  The author states that this inhibits our "constitutional right to use material for teaching"  I thought there were no formal laws with fair use?  Seems to me like this is a case of Manufacturers using this fair use concept when it benefits them.

The last question I will examine is question sixteen, which I have a big problem with.  It says we as teachers can use machines that are invented to purposely beat the copyright protection on "DVD's, CD-ROM's, and just about everything else." In question twelve there seems to be a battle over constitutional rights to obtain material and now we are inventing what I consider "pirating machines"  Whats the difference between using a machine that purposely defeats the concept of copyright and illegally downloading music using certain softwares that allow us to do so?  

This reading really confused me as to what is right and wrong.  Fair use seems like a concept that can really help or really hurt.  I got a lot of mixed signals from this and reading it makes me nervous to use things I find on the internet or anywhere else that I did not create.  I guess I will just use as much citation as possible at all times to prove that I had no intentions of  plagiarism or intellectual copyright.