Fair Use and How it Protects Us Webmasters
Hosted by Ghostbusters Headquarters

It's interesting, some of the mudslinging that goes around the internet as to "hey, that was mine first." Or, "hey, I bled to finish that graphic and now it's on your website!" There was an incredible article printed in Classroom Connect, a publication sent to Education Webmasters (like yours truely) written by David Loundy, a lawyer practicing intellectual property and computer law, with focus on Internet issues. I've taken segments from his article (first of all, I don't have the strength to type the whole thing, and also don't want copyright laws inflicted on me either!) for your reference and also for you to link to through your Ghostbusters webpage. I give you, Mr. Loundy (with my comments in yellow):

==Fair Use Provision==

In terms of permission to use a work allowed by the Copyright Act, the most relevant provision is the fair use provision (17 U.S.C. Section 107). This section provides that, while copying would ordinarily be an infringement, if the copying constitutes "fair use," then the copying will not be considered an infringement of the copyright holder's rights.

This section allows you to use copyrighted works for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research (much like many Ghostbusters websites provide). While this list, taken right from the statute, points out that teaching is a favored use, the statute lists four (nonexclusive) factors that must be considered when examining whether your use of a protected work is a fair one: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is aof a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (so, obviously if someone put the entire film on Real Video for download, that's a little "substantial"); and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Here's the one that I found especially interesting:

==Copyright Basics==

Under U.S. copyright law, any work of authorship, including pictures, text, sounds, etc. is immediately protected upon the work's initial fixation: that is, when it is written down or saved to disk (or Zip/Jazz/SuperDisk, hard drive, web server, etc.) (Pretty much, you made it, you saved it, your copywrote it). Thus, virtually everything your students (or GB webmasters at that, remember, it's an edumication, er education publication) create is protected by the copyright law the instant it's fixed.

Anytime you copy a work protected by copyright, there must be something that allows that copy to be made. That "something" could be some form of written permission from the copyright holder (the student) or it could be a statutory section that allows you to make the desired copies. It is important to understant what constitutes a copy in the computer context: pretty much anything you can imagine, such as saving a work to a disk or printing it out. A number of court cases have held that even loading a copyrighted work into a computer's RAM (memory) constitutes the creation od a copy and possibility an infringing one at that. (Inlcuding putting it on your website)

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Okay, so that was pretty long, but it answers a lot of our questions that are floating around the 'net lately. I really suggest that you take a look at the full version of his article at the Classroom Connect website for more information, but these are the two sections that really relate to Ghostbusters websites.

-NetSolo
Webmaster Ghostbusters Headquarters