Copyright and Fair Use

This comic is about teaching people what they need to do if they ever use copyrighted material. It capitalizes on the fact that other people's work is their own, it is their property, and they have the right to do with it what they want. They provided many examples to show people that these situations do happen and they are important to look out for.

I learned "Clearing Rights" is the process of finding the rights holder, and getting permission to or paying to use material. Sometimes companies will demand an exuberant amount of many money for the use of their work. Many people who originally use other people's work will take individual parts out because of the amount of money others request. If, however, you would like to use works published before 1923 or produced by the federal government, you are welcome to do so because they are clearly in the public domain.

I am very surprised about the information that I am learning. I have never thought of this before, and we have all used pictures in presentations that we should not have used. It seems very over the top of a company to demand so much, although because they own it, I suppose we must do what they request. I would imagine that many of the pictures I've used in the past and the references I've made are in violation of many copyright laws. I should probably start paying more attention to the people's products that I am using. The use of the comic to present the information was better than reading it in paragraph format. This made it easier and more enjoyable to read.

In my classroom I will make this clear to students, and make sure that they give credit properly and where credit is due. A failure to do so will result in a loss of points and they will need to take it off any internet sights they have posted it to. As a teacher, I will always site all information in my presentations that I got from other places not created by myself. This will give appropriate credit and also show my students that it is important to do it. I want to make sure I lead by example.


Center for the Study of Public Domain