Misappropriation can occur so it is important to know you’re your rights for use of media in the classroom, to stay current with emerging media, and to continue to engage your students in a medium in which they already participate. Temple University's Media Education Lab and American University's Center for Social Media co-produced this video to announce the release of new Fair Use Guidelines for Media Literacy Teachers. The video includes discussions of the harm caused by educators' uncertainty about their rights in the classroom to clarifications of concepts you need to understand if you are going to introduce remix practices in your teaching.

Consider this playful explanation of the core concepts of American intellectual property law created through the appropriation and remixing of characters from Disney cartoons. This video, A Fair(y) Use Tale, produced by Bucknell University law professor Eric Faden, is a result of Disney Corporation's aggressive advocation of copyrights claims that will stop others from using their works. Lawrence Lessig, a critic of the organization, describes current copyright law as "the Mickey Mouse Protection Act" and suggests that it was designed to ensure no one ever treated Walt Disney the way Disney treated Hans Christian Anderson and the Brothers Grimm. While Disney built his reputation by retelling classic fairy tales for new audiences, the Disney Corporation has blocked others from using their materials to generate new works.

In practice, educators enjoy broad protection for their use of existing materials in an educational setting and remix artists of all kinds have more rights than some suspect as long as they are producing "transformative works." The Supreme Court's decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc defined transformative works as those that deploy their borrowed materials in a way that "adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message." However, remixers must be aware that fair use is a case-by-case judgment call, which they can make themselves based on the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. Knowing your rights as a remixer is key to protecting your free speech and, thus, should be a key component of media literacy. In a world where we were mostly consumers of works produced by others, we cannot afford to be ignorant of intellectual property law. As more people gain access to the means of cultural production and circulation, students must to be introduced to core legal concepts.