After listening to the copyright lawyer talk about infringing on copyright and the internet I realize that I probably infringe on copyright all the time! Even if I make a copy of a movie that I've bought, that is breaking copyright law. I remember when I was a kid we had lots of copied VHS tapes, and I would always see the FBI message and was always worried that the FBI would really come knock on our door!
Sometimes I don't do it intentionally, for example I print out worksheets for my students all the time. My essential question is, if these worksheets are free online, then am I infringing on copyright by downloading, printing, and copying them?
I try to cite my sources even on my cooking blog. If I take a recipe from somewhere, which I usually do, then I link to wherever I took it from. If that cite takes the recipe from somewhere ELSE, I can't guarantee that they cite their sources properly.
Collette talks about how she doesn't necessarily think that file sharing is bad. I tend to agree, because we can learn so much and get so much information from sharing files with other users, and with creators. She also starts to talk about transforming content, and therefore not breaking copyright. So to build on my citing sources in my blog, even though I'm using someone else's content, I am commenting and building upon it, so I am reproducing and distributing it, but I am also transforming it into something else, so therefore I am not breaking copyright.
It's all very confusing and you do have to be careful of what you download, distribute (even to friends). I learned in a previous class that images that appear on internet image searches have copyrights, and you can't just willy-nilly take an image to use in your work! Who knew? Well someone did, but that's beside the point, I didn't know.
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ReplyDeleteI sometimes want to use Internet images, but I try to search out who they belong to first. If I can't find anything, I don't use it. I came to this habit because someone (basically) yelled at me for using an image that wasn't mine. I did it without thinking about infringing upon someone rights and immediately took it down when I realized what I had done.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in college I had something I wanted to use for a college paper that belonged to someone else, so I tried, for a few months, to contact them. I never heard from them. VERY frustrating.