Our library class is coming to an end with our last regular class meeting. Lately we have been talking a lot about copyright laws and how to distinguish whether an item is infringing the law or not. Today we talked about “fair use”. Fair use is like a doctrine or guidline on whether or not the use of some material is considered copyright infringement. The guidlines include four main points. One is the purpose of the use. Is using a book or painting going to make the user money. If someone grabs an author’s work, makes copies, then sells it; that is copyright infringement. Next is the nature of the original work. This means one cannot take someone else’s work change one thing, then claim it as there own. Another is the amount of original work used. For example, if a teacher makes copies for his students of a few pages of someones work, and is used for educational purposes; that is OK. The last is the effect of the use on the market. This means if someone is making a profit of someone elses work, they are infringing the copyright law. In class Mrs. Radom showed how we could all recognize single letters or characters from a copyrighted name. The “S” in Starburst was easy to distinguish. We also discussed the differences between “all right reserved” and “some rights reserved”. I hope we covered everything on the exam becuase I have no clue what we will be tested on.
