The Center for Social Media at American University has just released a study entitled The Cost of Copyright Confusion for Media Literacy. The report, which is based on interviews with dozens of teachers and educators, concludes that:

The fundamental goals of media literacy education—to cultivate critical thinking about media and its role in culture and society and to strengthen creative communication skills—are compromised by unnecessary copyright restrictions and lack of understanding about copyright law . . . . This is not only unfortunate but unnecessary, since copyright law permits a wide range of uses of copyrighted material without permission or payment. Educational exemptions sit within a far broader landscape of fair use. However, educators today have no shared understanding of what constitutes acceptable fair use practices.

A pdf version of the entire report can be found here.