I was reviewing some of the school's classroom Web sites recently and saw pages where a teacher used Charles Schultz's Peanuts characters as wallpaper. Is that a violation of copyright?
It may be, but you need to do a little footwork to find out for sure.
Check with the teacher to see if s/he paid for the rights (or obtained written permission) to use the characters as a background on the Web pages. If so, there should be a statement to that effect on the page. If not, the teacher needs to remove the background immediately and either obtain permission or use wallpaper from the public domain.
Teacher created Web sites set examples for students and their families. It is critical that they model appropriate, legal use of images.
Submitted by: Susan Brooks-Young
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