We covered copyright (or intellectual propery law) our last class before sprng break—Friday, March 4.
Hopefully this blog post will reduce to writing much of what we focused on in class on March 4.
Bottom line: Read and study this post carefully! Might pull from it for quiz or test questions in near future.
We need to have a clear understanding of copyright—a key area of First Amendment law—regardless of what branch of mass communication we work in.
Copyright comes up often in chapter 5 “Recordings.” See for example, how artistic copyright is mentioned on pg. 88; also pages 97-98 deal with stealing or illegal downloading/copying of music.
As we mentioned in class, Chapter 5 notes that the entire recording industry is fighting copyright infringement (violation).
I covered several key areas of copyright law in class on March 4—among them: the scope of copyright law (what sorts of intellectual property are protected by copyright law); fair use; the idea that an idea or fact is not copyrightable; the question of whether the amount of intellectual propery that is stolen or lifted or copied factors into copyright violation; whether attribution or sourcing of intellectual property protects a person against copyright infringement; the meaning of the copyright symbol (C in a small circle); and the critical importance of getting the permission of the creator of the intellectual property before using said property for your own purposes.
First (as I write this blog post) a disclaimer. I am not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV.
So I don’t claim to be an expert on copyright.
But I know enough to help all the future professional journalists or other kinds of communication professionals in our class.
A few key points:
1. What is copyright? Basically, it’s a law that protects a person’s intellectual property. If a person writes or creates some sort of expression (photo, graphic, painting, story, sketch...), copyright assures the creator of that expression a certain degree of protection from intellectual theft.
2. When you research or read about copyright law, one word keeps coming up over and over. The word is “PERMISSION.” This means that if you are not sure if something is copyrighted, then it probably is copyrighted! Always, when in doubt as a writer, artist, photographer... and you want to borrow someone else’s work for your own use, ask the creator of that work for HIS/HER PERMISSION.
3. Even though you cite the source of expression (that you have lifted from someone else’s work and used for your own purposes), you could still be guilty of copyright infringement, especially if you are getting money for your writing, graphics, photography or whatever. Again, always best to get PERMISSION OF THE CREATOR OF THE WORK BEFORE YOU LIFT IT FOR YOUR OWN USE.
An exception to the above is if you are researching and writing a paper for a class or course. In that case, if your work is purely for academic reasons and you don’t intend to have it published, and you will not gain financially from it, you probably don’t need to get permission from the creator of the work you have cited or borrowed. But you definitely need to source it (give the original author credit) in your paper.
4. There’s a common misconception that writing, photography, graphics, painting, songwriting, sculpting or other forms of expression have to be accompanied by the copyright symbol (letter C inside a circle) before the expression has copyright protection. Not true! All things written, captured on camera, or sketched or otherwise created are immediately copyrighted! When you write an email, it immediately has copyright protection. It’s yours. You created it. No one else can legally reproduce or copy it or forward it to another party without your permission. Notice that P word (permission)!
That said, it is the case that the copyright notice (which you can also have registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) reinforces protection of the creator of the original work. The notice is a caution or reminder to people not to steal or rip off the work without permission of the creator of the work.
5. One big factor that comes into play regarding copyright law is commercial benefit. Are you, through your writing, photography, singing, infographics, sketches, getting paid for that expression? And, if so, does what you claim to be totally your expression (writing, photography, whatever), contain the work of others? Careful if this is the case! You could be found guilty of copyright infringement and pay big money (to the original creator of the expression) in a court of law.
6. There is a little wiggle room in the copyright law. There’s an exemption called fair comment. This means that it’s okay for you to reproduce, without permission of the original creator of the expression, that expression if you are doing an evaluation or critique or review or even a parody of that expression. This helps movie and arts review (books, plays) critics do their thing in the media. But it’s not okay for you, even if you are a critic of some sort, to pass off someone else’s work as your own.
7. Always good to remember that facts and ideas cannot be copyrighted. But the verbatim (precise, exact) expression of those facts and idea are subject to copyright protection.
Example: I write a story about the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I note in my story, in my own words, certain facts about that trial such as: it occurred in the early 1990s; Mr. Simpson was accused of murdering two persons–his wife and his wife’s close friend; the two dead persons were found in pools of blood, butchered, on a sidewalk at Mr. Simpson’s home residence in Los Angeles; the jury in this case returned a verdict of not guilty and let Mr. Simpson go free.
On the other hand, if I lift verbatim a passage from another article (about Simpson’s murder trial) written by someone else (whether printed in a newspaper, magazine or from a Web site) and use that in my story (as if I had written that lifted portion), then I am guilty of copyright infringement.
8. It’s also a common misunderstanding that the amount or extent of text that a person lifts from another person’s writing, without that original creator’s permission, factors into whether a violation of copyright has occurred.
Careful! Courts have ruled that in some instances, even though very few words were stolen from another person’s work, those very few words constitute the heart and soul of the original expression; and thus violation of copyright has occurred. This situation has happened with regard to the words in songs or the musical notes of songs. Very little may have been stolen or borrowed or copied, but it’s still against copyright law.
9. Just because something is on the Web, it’s not free for the taking–UNLESS THE AUTHOR OR CREATOR OF THE WEBSITE STATES EXPLICITLY ON THE WEBSITE THAT MATERIAL ON THE SITE MAY BE USED FREELY FOR WHATEVER PURPOSE.
But again, be careful. If no such statement is on the website, the material on the site is copyrighted. We therefore get back to asking for permission to use or borrow.
Bottom line: If you did not create the material you located on a website, do not use it (especially for your own commercial or financial gain) without the creator’s permission. Without that permission, you cannot legally use or copy the expression for your own use. Without permission, you are a common, scumbag intellectual, lying, cheating thief who is guilty of copyright infringement!
Some may wonder how they can get caught for stealing work from a web site. It can happen folks! Big corporations and other entities today have “spiders” (software that scours or crawls the Internet) looking for intellectual property thieves.
Blogging: This is a fairly new phenomenon, in terms of copyright law, but my reading is that while you can blog freely, you should not reproduce or blog someone else’s verbatim expression as your own expression. Again, we get back to that important permission factor! It does seem okay, to have links in your blog (without the permission of the original creator of that link.) Didn’t I say earlier that copyright law is complex??!!
Well, okay folks, that’s about it now for copyright law.
See you in class very soon.
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