A. All of the recording activities you have indicated require prior permission.  Unless the school district, when adopting a textbook and ancillary materials, negotiated duplicating rights, the fact that recordings were purchased, doesn’t give the right to make copies.  The purchase of a book doesn’t give one the right to convert that book into another format  and then to make further copies of that format.  The act of making such copies potentially infringes the rights of the author for making copies of their works and being able to create derivative works based on their works.

In reference to iTunes, the use of the site and the downloading of content from that site is governed by the license one agrees to when using iTunes.  License agreements are contracts and contract law supersedes copyright.  iTunes only permits downloads to be used for personal use.  Even though a teacher or a school opens an iTunes account, this doesn’t grant the teacher or school additional privileges.  However, unless there are further restrictions stated on the site, materials purchased may still be eligible for claims of Fair Use and there still would be the opportunity to use portions according to various guidelines that exist, such as the Educational MultiMedia Guidelines or the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.

A. Reading a book onto audio tape or video tape constitutes making a copy of the entire book and changing the format. Both are potential violations of the rights of the copyright holder. Then, taking the copied work and airing it over a transmission system, without transmission rights, is another potential violation.

What would be permissible would be a “book talk” where the book is summarized and a few, brief sections are read in order stimulate interest in having students read the book(s). It would also be permissible to read the book live without recording the presentation.