The adviser for a student newspaper in Boulder, Colo., logged onto her computer to check a story posted online about the new hit TV series “SMASH” and let out a sigh.

“They will have to fix that one,” Sarah Zerwin, adviser of The Royal Banner at Fairview High School, said about the photo that was posted with the story as she noticed the photo credit to NBC.com, a for-profit news organization, instead of the preferred Wikimedia Commons website, a database of freely shared media files.

Zerwin said students who have grown up with the Internet think that everything out there is free for them to grab. She understood their frustration when they have to follow the copyright laws and ask for permission to print a photo.

“I think I need to do a much better job of teaching them the laws of copyright and why they are important,” Zerwin said.

When it comes to teaching copyright laws, Alan Weintraut, mentor teacher for the ASNE Reynolds High School Journalism Institute at Arizona State University and adviser of The A Blast at Annandale (Va.) High School, tells his students “ninety-nine percent of the time it is illegal to use a photo you did not take.”

“Copyright and fair-use issues are the second most common reason why individuals contact the Student Press Law Center,” said its executive director, Frank LoMonte. “Almost every single piece of information on the Internet is somebody else’s protected material.”

According to the SPLC Student Media Guide to Copyright Law, a copyright is an individual’s property right. It is illegal to use someone’s copyrighted work in a student publication without first obtaining consent.

The only exception to this law is fair use, which the SPLC defines as “when an individual other than the copyright owner can use a copyrighted work without permission if the use would be considered a ‘fair use.’” Fair use allows the copyrighted work to be reproduced and used in limited circumstances, such as for news reporting or educational use.

“If a photo is proprietary to an individual or a corporation it is not covered under fair use,” Weintraut said. “If it is a publicity photo for a (movie), then you can use it under fair use (when reviewing that movie).”

When he explains to his students how copyright laws work in regard to proprietary photos, he uses an example that all can understand.

“Any photo you did not take and use, it is the same as taking a painting off of a museum wall to use,” Weintraut said. “You would not walk into a museum and take a Picasso off the wall.”

“It’s all about the permission,” said Joseph Garcia, director of communications for the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University.

“With photos, it’s important for (the students) to understand that the same rules and laws that apply to stories also apply to photos,” Garcia said. “It is important to have a set policy in black and white that they sign. If they sign it, then they acknowledge that it is their duty to adhere to copyright laws.”

Garcia, who teaches news writing at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, also reinforces teaching copyright lessons throughout the semester with open discussions.

If someone tries to print a copyrighted photo, then the whole class has to look at it and have a discussion, Garcia said.

“Everything has to be looked upon as a lesson,” he said. “When they do something right, we talk about that too.”

Zerwin is looking to incorporate more than just a discussion of copyright laws with her students.

“It’s got to be more than just saying, ‘Here are the copyright rules and you guys need to follow them’ at the beginning of the year,” Zerwin said. “It’s got to be some vivid lesson about why it matters.”

Deann McBride, adviser of the student newspaper at Page (Ariz.) High School, has students collaborate in groups when she teaches a lesson on copyright and fair use.

“I break the kids into groups and assign (each group) a topic,” McBride said. “I give them suggested websites and then I send them out to research that topic. They have to create a presentation and teach the class about their aspect of copyright law.”

She attributes the success of the lesson to how “it seems to really help having them teach each other.”

McBride then checks for student mastery of the lesson with a quiz covering all of the groups’ presentations. She then ends the lesson with a reinforcement activity.

“We go back and practice,” McBride said. “I give them situations where they have to go find pictures on the Internet and either use it in a publication or change it in some way. Then they have to write why what they did is legal.”

One myth regarding copyright that LoMonte addresses is the belief that credit equals consent.

“Crediting does not absolve you of copyright,” LoMonte said. “It is a signed confession telling everyone where you stole (the photo) from.”

Garcia sums up how important accuracy of information, including photos, is to the ethics of the journalism profession.

“This profession is very exact,” he said. “It is very unforgiving.”