copyright_coxd

Copyright

Dawn S Cox

February 23, 2009

 

    Copyright gives the owner the sole rights of anything that they write to do with as they choose.  For example it could be to distribute it, copy it, perform it, display it and modify it.   The author of the work is the owner and in essence owns that document.  The copyright protects your document for you.  The following works are protected by copyright:  literal, musical and dramatic works, pantomimes and choreographic works, pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works, motion pictures and other audiovisual works, sound recordings and architectural works.  So whether you write a song or draw up plans for a building copyright protects this document from being reproduced, duplicated, or changed by anyone else.   There are some things that are not covered under copyright.  For example:  names, titles, calendars, improvised speeches, listing of ingredients, etc.   Copyright begins when the work is created and lasts for 70 years after the author is deceased.  After researching this I now know that copyright begins immediately and continues even after the original author dies. 

    Fair use is defined in section 107 which was created after multiple copyright court decisions over the years.  There are four factors to consider(1): 

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

3. amount and substantial of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

These four factors are considered under the fair use law.  These allow news reporters, teaching, scholarship and research, individuals to criticize and comment to use works legally under the fair use copyright law. 

    Creative commons allows a non-profit organization the right to publish creative works and allow others to build upon those.  This is like a massive public domain in which copyright is not an issue.  For example "flickr" is an example of creative commons.  This was first tested in 2006.   Contained within the creative commons licenses are four major permissions. (2)

• Attribution (by) requires users to attribute a work's original author. All Creative Commons licenses contain this option, but some now-deprecated licenses did not contain this component.
• Authors can either not restrict modification, or use Share-alike (SA), which is a copyleft requirement that requires that any derived works be licensed under the same license, or No derivatives (ND), which requires that the work not be modified..
• Non-commercial (NC) requires that the work not be used for commercial purposes.

    In my daily work I use the fair use copyright law.  I constantly use textbooks and other information to share knowledge with my students.   When teaching copyright I have used the following website http://www.cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf.  This website is very similar to the one we have in our class notes on blackboard.

 

1. US Copyright Office. retrieved on February 22, 2009 from the :  http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

2. Wikipedia.  retrieved on February 22, 2009 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons