What is Copyrighted?
Imagine that you've written a book or a piece of music or crafted an original digital image.
As soon as it is in tangible form -- which may include anything written on paper, saved to disk (web pages, graphics on the web, email messages or computer programs), or saved on any audio/video device -- your creation is covered by copyright law and is your intellectual property.
What Does Copyright Protect?
Copyright law says that copyright holders ONLY may do the following things with their created work:
- reproduce the work
- prepare derivative works based upon the work
- distribute copies of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
- perform the work publicly
- display the copyrighted work publicly
- in the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of digital audio transmission
- in the case of a “work of visual art” the author has certain rights of attribution and integrity
Fair Use is a clause in copyright law that allows non-profit educational insititutions and libraries the ability to do the above things with someone else's copyrighted work, within specific guidelines.
Copyright Tutorials
Additional information can be found in these excellent tutorials:
Copyright Crash Course (University of Texas)
Copyright 101 (Bringham Young University)
Copyright Bay (University of St. Francis)
What is 'ethics'?
eth·ics/ˈeTHiks/Noun
2. The moral correctness of specified conduct.
Using someone else's work
Any time someone else's work is used, it is ethical to give credit to the original creator. This takes the form of a citation which indicates who the original creator is and where the item was found.
When using someone else's work in your own without giving credit, you are essentially indicating that you created it. This is called plagiarism.
Read moreUsing Media
Media such as photographs, video, and sound are all protected by copyright -- even when available 'freely' on the Internet.
The Center for Social Media has gathered Best Practices for using media in your work.
Need help with using media in your course? Check out this resource:
Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in Your Course (Baruch College)
Last Update: 07 Jul 14:56 | Tagged with: copyright fair use scholarship ethics information