10 Things You Should Know About Copyrights

Copyright is about limited ownership. That means the law tries to be sensible about what you can use – it doesn’t want to get in the way of new culture, so you can use stuff in certain ways and certain terms. Basically copy and pasting is not really a good idea these days if you’re not copying your own work.

Here’s a list of 10 things you should know about Copyrights:

1. Use of copyrighted materials is generally acceptable if it is used for: news reporting, criticism and comment, parody, research and scholarship, and nonprofit educational uses.
2. Copyright law allows for the copying of copyrighted materials if it is for educational use; this means that teachers can make copies of copyrighted material for their students.
3. Any creative work, including dance productions and speeches! Is immediately protected by copyright law once it is in a fixed or recorded form.
4. The use of copyright notice was not required by law until 1989; however, works produced before that date are still protected under current copyright laws. Works do not enter the public domain until 70 years after the author’s death.
5. Teachers can use material found on the Internet for use in the classroom.
6. However, teachers cannot share this same material on the Internet with other teachers without permission from copyright holders.
7. It is, on the other hand, permissible to share such material on a password-protected school website for teachers, students, and families.
8. Teachers can access copyrighted material that is technologically blocked for their students’ use in projects.
9. Teachers cannot make copies of copyrighted software material in order to have more copies for their specific number of students. The number of students who can use the software is limited to the number of copies of the software that the school owns. Libraries are usually used for these archival purposes.
10. There is no absolute word limit to fair use of copyrighted materials; it depends on the circumstances and the length and nature of the work, etc.