Copy Right

Jason Hardin came in and talked to my class about everything copy right.  These laws date back all the way until the 1790s when the constitution was written.  There are a wide range of things that can be copy righted and they range from writings to art work to photos and basically anything that an individual creates.  He explained that the creator has the right to do what he or she wants to do with their work.  When a work is copy righted that means that no one can make a copy of the work without the creator’s consent.  That makes since but what I didn’t know is that copy right infringement is a criminal offence.

Jason make me thinks about how copy right can encourage people to be creative and innovative.  Because of people know that they can copy right something they are more likely to create knowing that their ideas cannot be taken.  They will get the credit for their work.  Something else I did not know is that the copy right lasts the entire person’s life that came up with the idea plus 70 years after they die.  This is because there can still be benefits to the work that their family or friends could capitalize on.  An interesting example that Jason gave us was about Walt Disney.  Copy rights used to have a limit of 50 years after the persons death.  After Walter died the Disney Company wrote a proposal to change the law to be 70 years because they didn’t want other people making money off of the Disney characters.  This proposal went through and the law was changed.

There are a few exceptions to copy rights.  They are called fair use and these are context based usage.  There are four provisions.  The first deals with the nature of the work you are reproducing meaning if their work exists in order to make money.  The second is why you are making a copy.  The third is how much of the work you are copying.  The last on is how it hurts the right’s holder.

Copy Right by Lauren Mercado is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.