Friday, June 29, 2012

Week 1 Reading- Copyright Issues



Part 1-- What is copyright – copyright means if you can create it you have the right to protect it and legally claim it as your own. This was nice explained in the very first video I watched on copyright. What that means to me is simply anything that I create and wish to protect that includes my short stories I need to have copyrighted.  As the owner of the work I will have all rights to use and reuse it unless I give permission to others to use my work.  I also understand that material that are improvisational that are not filmed or recorded can’t be copyright.  From viewing the other videos on copyright I learned that individuals with copyright ownership has that for the lifetime plus 70 years and companies copyright lasts for 100 years which is an extremely long time.
Part 2--What is fair use- fair use is not a right it is a legal defensible position. It involves these three conditions whether something is fair use nature, the amount (which is unassigned percent) and commercial effect.  As an educator one must be very careful when dealing with fair use because although the amount is unassigned it is still a very small percent.  Teachers are still required to follow the same fair use rules as non-educators when it comes to materials. They have to give credit to the owner of the material and how much is use is just as important as well.
Part 3-- What is Creative Commons Solutions- creative commons is a place to find all kinds of material that is free to use as long as you give credit to the owner of the material.  Creative commons solution uses symbols to inform the borrower how they are allowed to use the material and the type of permission they are given for that particular work. 

4 comments:

Paula Sanchez said...

I agree with your statement from Part 2 of your blog, Tracy, where you said that as an educator, one must be very careful when dealing with fair use. The vagueness of the percentage you're allowed to use or "borrow" is a little troubling to me. I think the information we've been given is invaluable, and I especially appreciate learning about Creative Commons. With this information, I feel more informed about what information I am allowed to use, how much of it I can use without permission, and why it's important to reference my sources.

msdedej said...

Tracy,
I think we share some of the similar views on this situation when is comes to copyright. I was probably only aware of a few of the things that where mention in the videos, but after looking through the videos and the reading I was truly enlighten by the information that I learned. Also again with the “Fair Use” as an educator we do still have to be careful with what we do use in the classroom because the small percent that is fair use is that a very small percent.

Charlene Swoboda said...

Hi, Tracy. You re-explain some of the copyright and fair use privileges well. Have you ever heard of companies who “buy the rights” of dead artists (from their families?) to extend copyright longer? This doesn’t seem like “fair use” and I don’t see how it fits into the current law. However, like you mentioned, there is still lots of ambiguity in words like “small amounts”, percentages of works, etc that make the exact meaning of “fair use” difficult to pinpoint. As an art teacher, I probably use more than a small percentage of copyrighted materials in my presentations to students. I have to since I teach art history. Everything has a copyright unless its old enough to have expired and even then the books and websites have copyrights on many images. Who then “owns” our history, if teachers can’t legally show it to teach with it? Sure, generally speaking, people aren’t going after teachers to sue them for copyright, but now teachers aren’t just teaching with a poster tacked to the wall. Instead they are making online presentations, videos with visual imagery and movie, etc. I would feel more comfortable with the law protecting teacher rights more as teaching methods become more digital, widespread, and interactive.

jbb said...

Excellent summary and review of the copyright issues materials. Very well communicated.

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