Education and Free Use

Here is an interesting BBC article about schools and free use of images on their web sites. This article argues that while images can be used for educational purposes without gaining permission from the rights' holder, the use of images on a web site or on shared lesson plans, is a violation of copyright law.

While these are UK schools, I find the idea of a school owing large amounts of money because an image was posted on their web site very puzzling. Apparently the line between "educational" free use and piracy is not clear. Isn't sharing a lesson plan with a colleague a form of education? Aren't most school web sites aimed at either the students who attend the school or other people interested in learning?

Here is an area of the copyright law that I feel needs to be reexamined, but even as I write this I recognize the difficulty of this. How can we clarify online, outside of the physical classroom, what is education and what is piracy? In one manner of speaking, couldn't every use be considered educational?