Week 4 - Copyright, Plagiarism, and Ethical Issues

This week, we learned a lot about copyright and plagiarism as well as the ethical issues behind using someone else's information and thoughts. Copyright applies to all tangible and creative works including literary, dramatic, musical, choreography, artistic, video,text, pictorial, architectural, and certain other works. There are ways to get around the copyright laws such as it's not valid in countries that didn't sign the copyright treaty, works published before Dec 31, 1922 are fair game, copyright only exists for 70 years after the death of the author, and the Fair Use Act which allows limed usage of copyrighted work without permission from the copyright owner. We also learned about Creative Commons, a new kid of copyright. Creative Commons allows the copyright owner to put conditions on their copyright agreement. This week was really informative.

In education, teaching on these topics are essential (maybe not so much at the Early Education Level). It becomes more important as the students get older. These topics are huge. Plagiarism is going to be brought up in every class as they go through their education. Also, it becomes increasingly important after they are done with school because at the later age it has more consequences than just a bad grade on a paper. They can be sued and fined and mess up their life just from something stupid like forgetting to give credit to the person who actually made the things they are presenting. It is important to educate students on the proper uses of sources and citations and well as deciphering which sources are reliable. It's also important to show these kids examples of what can happen if they improperly use something that is copyrighted or plagiarize. Students need to see that their action can have serious consequences so they understand the importance. You can do this by showing them a news story or something where someone got in serious trouble for copyright infringement. This makes the topic more pressing and real for students.



I chose this YouTube video because it is a quick overview of a lot of information that we went over this week. It talks about practical uses of Fair Use and copyright.