1. Copyright Laws

2. What is copyright?
Copyright is the law of the United States that protects the works of authors, artist, composers, and others from being used without permission.

3. Don’t the public have a right to use music and art?
Yes, in fact the copyright law tries to balance the rights of artist and others with the rights of the public. Fair use protects the rights of the public to use limited use of copyrighted materials.

4. What is public domain?
Works that are not copyrighted are public domain and may be used without permission. However, you should still give credit to the source.

5. What is fair use?
Fair use allows you to use a limited amount of copyrighted material for your educational use. Think about the material you want to use in your report. Does it pass the test:
Does it have a nonprofit educational purpose?
What kind of material do you want to use?
Are you using only a small portion?
Will your use deprive the author from making money?

6. I found a great website for the Smithsonian Project
I found a great website for the Smithsonian Project? Can I use it in my report?
Yes, the Smithsonian has granted permission to students to use their photographs for school reports. Many materials are in the public domain at government websites. Be sure to read the copyright statement.

7. Does it matter how much of a song or video I use?
Yes. Amount refers to use of a portion of a work. For motion media, you can use 10% or up to 3 minutes. For text material, you can use 10% or up to 1000 words. For music, lyrics and so forth you can use up to 10% but no more than 30 seconds of an individual's work.

8. Can I use a text from a site if it doesn’t have the word copyright or the copyright symbol © on the page?
Just because a page doesn’t have the word or copyright ©, doesn’t mean it isn’t copyrighted. In fact, almost everything on the web is copyrighted.

9. I Can show everybody my project by putting it on my webpage right?
Not quite. When you put your material on a webpage, then it’s being shown to an audience outside of your school. If you have copyrighted material, normally exempted from student projects within a school, your project no longer falls under the fair use umbrella.

10. What about attribution?
You should always give credit or attribution to the person who created the work such as a photograph, sound recording, motion picture , or document.

11. I want to use a cool sound recording from a website, but I can’t find anything about copyright. What should I do?
The best policy is to write for permission to use the file. Find the contact person and compose an message. Put “Permission to Use” in the subject line. Most of the time you will receive a reply to your request. Do not assume that “no response” means it is okay to use it.

12. Who’s going to know?
You’ll know. Besides, put yourself in the author’s place. What if you created a great thing-a-ma-jig, but someone else got credit? Or worse, what if you could sell lots of thing-a-ma-jig, but someone made a copy so now no one would buy them?

13. Scenario 1
Students in Mr. Johnson's web design class have been given an assignment to make a personal web site. Timmy Thompson, a student in the class, loves snowboarding and wants to put some snowboarding pictures on his personal site. The only problem is that he doesn't have any good pictures of himself. So, Timmy searches for snowboarding images in his favorite search engine and finds a site with a number of good pictures he would like to use. He looks everywhere on the site, but doesn't see anything written that says the images are protected by copyright. Timmy downloads a few of the images and uses them on his personal web site on the hobbies page. Although he is tempted to try and impress other students by passing the pictures off as his own, Timmy is a man of good conscience, and under each picture he sites the source of the image to give credit to the owner. From what you have learned about copyright law, would Timmy's use of the images be acceptable?

14. Scenario 2
For their second project, students in Mr. Johnson's web design class have been instructed to create a web site about their favorite place. The class just finished an activity where they learned about copyright law and Mr. Johnson warns the students that points will be deducted from their final score if he finds any copyright violations. Not wanting to jeopardize his grade, Timmy Thompson, gets his parents to drive him to his favorite place and takes pictures to use on his web site. When he gets to class the next day students present their finished sites to the class. Timmy notices that Susie Simpson has used a bunch of pictures on her web site that he knows must have been taken by a professional photographer. She didn't even site the source of the images. Timmy complains to Mr. Johnson that he thinks Susie used copyrighted images on her web site. Susie defends herself, claiming that she got the images off of a U.S. government web site and was allowed to use the images without restrictions because they were in the public domain. From what you have learned about copyright law, would Susy's use of the images be acceptable?

15. Scenario 3
As a final project in Mr. Johnson's class, students have been tasked with creating a web site for a local business in the community. Timmy Thompson picks his aunt's restaurant since he knows that she doesn't have a web site already. While searching the Internet for ideas, Timmy comes across a stock photography web site that has some really good close up pictures of different types of food. These images would be perfect for his project, so Timmy reads the usage restrictions for the images. Timmy is excited when he reads that the images require payment for commercial use, but are offered free for not-for profit or educational use. Since he is doing the project for a school assignment, Timmy downloads the images and uses them in his project. Timmy completes the final web site and receives praise from everyone, including his aunt and Mr. Johnson, about how nice the site looks. From what you have learned about copyright law, would Timmy's use of the images be acceptable?