ON USING INTERNET RESOURDRS
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
"If it's on the Internet and it's digital, and has no copyright statement or selling prices posted, then it's everyone's property, I can do anything I want."
What's your answer? The correct answer is "false"
It is an important issue because the federal copyright law protects the intellectual property rights in works of authorship (refer to http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html). When you do the internet search, download articles, music, video files, and reproduce them, make custom CDs, share them with peers and post them on your sites, be careful, you may violate the copyright law.
The common sense on the back of the copyright law is that the documents you read, the music you listen, the movie you watch (whether they are in the web or not) are created by some one, often as a way for them to make a living. If we want those creative individuals to spend their time preparing instructional materials, they must be compensated when their materials are used. It is the food on their table; you don't want to take that food away from them, do you
Then, what you can and cannot do? Here is a guideline for you to follow.
Thanks to the Fair Use Act, you are allowed to search, download, copy and paste materials from the webs to do your WebQuest or database search assignments. You can "create and present multimedia projects containing copyrighted material for educational purposes within the course for which they were created, and you can save these projects as examples of your academic work for future job or academic interviews" and "every member in your group can save not more than two copies (one original copy one back up copy) for up to two years", provided that you "give proper credit to the original sources (Grabe/Grabe, ch 10, 2006 [1])."
(to be continued next pag
