Feb 12th, 2011
Guest Speaker: Claudia Holland
Claudia Holland, GMU’s Copyright Officer, came to our Comm. 361 class to speak about copyright issues.
She explained how the three copyright traits are:
- Expression
- Originality
- Fixation
She then went on to explain and give examples of protected works and works not protected:
Protected works: Almost anything is a protected work.
- Literary
- Architectural
- Sounds recordings
- Motion pictures
- Graphics
- Plays
Works Not Protected:
- Ideas
- Basic facts
- Public domain
- Titles, names, short phrases, slogans
- Anything published prior to 1923
She then went on to explain that fair use was intended to benefit the public and that individuals can use these items without permission in certain circumstances. These factors are as followed:
- Purpose and character of the use
- Nature of the work
- Amount of substantially of the portion used
- Effect of the use on the potential market
A cool example she used was it dealing with a hit song. The lyricist and the composer actually own the rights to the song. With a hit song comes a bundle of rights such as:
- Reproduction: Cd’s, MP3s
- Derivative: Music videos
- Public distribution: Selling of Cd’s, MP3s, etc.
- Public performance: Concerts
- Public display: T-Shirts, bumper stickers
- Digital audio transmission: Podcasts
Holland ended her presentation by telling us about Creative Commons which is a website that “provides an infrastructure that consists of a set of copyright licenses and tools that create a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates..” It’s basically a wonderful tool to use as an online journalist to make sure you’re not running into any trouble with copyrights.
Very helpful stuff that opened my eyes to a lot of useful information.
