Copyright series

Everyone now—not just a writer—needs to be aware of copyright restrictions and laws. The music industry has been in the news a lot recently about rights to songs. The Internet and bloggers, too, are testing, whether intentionally or not, the current laws. In education, students and teachers also need to know the limits and rules of using sources. I am still appalled at the news story recently about the University of Texas-San Antonio students who wrote an honor code blasting plagiarizing—and plagiarized from Brigham Young University’s code. Geesh! Brigham Young had used another source—and properly credited it.

I’ll be posting a regular series for a while now on some copyright basics. Because much of what students do involves writing, the information can also apply to them. If you write a church bulletin or design a greeting card using a poem to sell at a local crafts fair, you should be aware of the laws. One of my pet peeves is the common use of cartoons. Unless you have written permission from the estate of Charles Schulz or from Gary Larson himself, you cannot copy his hilarious cartoon into the school newsletter.

For this series, I’ll be using as my main source the web site of the Library of Congress on U.S. Copyright law at http://www.copyright.gov/