Computer Literacy Essay

Copyright, Fair Use and Public Domain

Copyright is a legal set of guidelines that gives authors and artists control over their intellectual property. This set of laws limits who can copy, change, perform and share creations of the work. Copyright protection is technically granted as soon as original work of authorship is created.

In many cases a copyright logo does not need to be present for it still to have protection under the law. An example of when copyright laws would be violated would be the making, copying and selling of unlicensed DVD's and CD's. Along with digital media such as MP3 downloads, applications and music videos. Pirating of those types of copyrighted media has become easier due to the increased use of technologies.  

With internet speeds in constant momentum and with the advancements in the smartphone, new technology has given users the ability to share data more rapidly with more people.

Within the copyright guidelines is a principal called Fair use This is the core fundamental belief that not all copying should be banned. 

Copying of material should be allowed if it is used for commentary or criticism of copyrighted work. Fair use also allows for copyrighted work to be used if in a parody or for purpose of reporting news. Educational reasons also grant the use of copyrighted material for scholarly research, when cited properly. The laws behind the Fair use of copyrighted work often times are subjective and have been hard to establish clear rules. The use of general rules help determine whether material violates the law or not.

The Fair use law requires an analysis to determine if an infringement is made.  When investigating possible infringements on copyrighted work, an analysis is performed weighing four factors. First is purpose and character of the used copyrighted data. This includes commercial and non-profit uses of the authors original work.  The next in the analysis is the nature of the work establishing if the work came from a published source or an unpublished source. Next is the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the original work as a whole. The last factor is the effect on the potential market due to the use of the copyrighted work. If the use of the copyrighted material deprives the author or income it would not fall under the Fair use laws.

An example of the Fair use law that does not warrant infringements would be using quotes from a speech I heard while attending a work meeting. I took the quotes and created a calendar in which I used photos with the quotes. By making a transformation of the original it with my own design and creative style

A public domain consists of works that are either ineligible for copyright or the copyright protection has expired. The range of material is commonly called intellectual property which is not owned or controlled and is considered "public property".