Week Four: Copyright Law, Plagiarism, & Ethical Issues (extra post)

This week we learned about copyright laws and what they entail. They are meant to protect authors of any type of material from having their work changed or reproduced without permission. Basically, you shouldn't use anything that is not your own without written permission from an author or company. This applies to any countries that have signed the copyright treaties. You can be punished for as much as $100,000 per offense!!! Things such as calendars, lists of ingredients and slogans are not covered in the laws, and therefore can be used without having to ask permission from anyone. Another interesting thing that I learned is that things are copyrighted for 70 years after the death of the author. Also, depending on when they were copyrighted, they only last for so long before the author either pays a fee to have them copyrighted again and they can be transferred through contracts. Just because you don't see a copyright symbol anywhere doesn't meant that it hasn't been copyrighted. Unless it's a government document or you know that it is public domain, you need to ask the author's permission to use it. There is something called a Fair Use Act that allows special exemptions for libraries and educational uses. There are four factors that are involved: the purpose of the use, whether it's out of print or published, the amount of work used and the effect of the use of the work on a certain audience. Software is always protected and should only be installed on one computer. The is a company called Creative Commons (CC) that allows people to share and use other people's information as long as some attribution is given. It says "some rights reserved" instead of "all rights reserved" and are most common with online products.

This information is important to know, especially as I am a future teacher. Teachers use many different materials and examples, so they need to be aware of what they are allowed to use and make sure that they give credit to the author that they borrowed the information from. They can also teach their own students what the laws are and explain the seriousness of asking permission before using something that may belong to someone else. The most important thing I learned from the presentation was: "When in doubt, ask." It can't hurt and it's better to be safe than sorry.

I thought that this was an interesting clip showing how hard it is in the music industry with all the copyright laws.

Copyright Criminals