Creative Commons and intellectual property-- reflections on fair use

Today's readings led me back to an interesting thread I noticed a number of people picking at during Computers & Writing this year: how loosely can we read fair use? I know that in my classroom I've started teaching students to look specifically for Creative Commons work (and to understand the different designations for each, which the comic for today explains much more succinctly than I ever have-- that'll be a handy link to keep around), but frequently my students want to use their favorite songs (it's music in particular, I find, though also copyrighted images) in their digital media compositions.

I'm sometimes hesitant to remind my students that they shouldn't use copyrighted music or images, as I don't want to stifle their creativity (and some of their work is driven by specific musical choices), but I also wonder if I'm doing the wrong thing by not making an even bigger deal out of their choices and the potential ramifications.

I also wonder if the law-- or at least the de facto interpretation of fair use-- will change in the next decade as more and more of the folks from my generation and younger generations start to ascend to positions of relative power. As I believe someone pointed out the first day (sorry-- I wasn't looking when the comment came-- it was someone to the back of the room), there's a much different sense of ownership over digital media among younger people (I've noticed there's even a jump from me to my students; they find downloading tv shows, movies and music to be a regular-- and seemingly perfectly fine-- activity). I wonder if that will change the way ownership over media is viewed, particularly in academic settings (where it seems our students should be allowed to use whatever they need to learn).