Copyright Laws
Copyright laws… I’m sure some of you have heard a little bit of it but do you know what it means? Copyright laws have been around for a while. It’s a basic rule that everyone should follow.
When you make a video, a song, (painting, art, sculpture, audio, book, music, etc…) any picture that you created once you put it up anywhere its yours and its called copyright. No one can take it with out asking permission or they can’t make money off of it (without you making profit). When you ask permission to use the work they have created they decide how you use it. Say if I make a picture and you ask me to borrow it I can say you can only use a small piece of it and you pay me a certain amount and you can NOT make money off the work I have made. Imagine no law and you writing a whole novel and someone else going and taking all the credit and money. Think of all the problems this would cause in the world because one law wasn’t made.
Copyright lasts a very long time after the creator’s death which is 50 years. After copyright is over it’s under public domain. Public domain means when the work you have created is no longer copy right and you’re aloud to take the creation and use it in any sort of way and not have to ask permission.
Copy right doesn’t mean that you can’t touch any of the work the creator has made. There is another law called fair use. Fair use lets us take certain parts of the work but like again… you can’t make any money off of it. You can take a chapter of a book and use it but you can’t go and take the whole book. Fair use is basically the same for every creation. You can’t take a picture and go post it up somewhere and take all the credit for the picture. Another one would be movie previews on TV. When you see movie previews up for about ten seconds its because the creator is letting you see a sneak peek of a movie that is coming out. Some people like to create pictures, videos, paintings, etc… And let people take their creation because they want people to take some of their work and let it not be untouched and useless.
That is called creative commons. For you to want your work to be noticed and parts of it taken you have to register your work. I think Creative commons is a smart idea because many people might want parts of their work taken.
For more information about Creative commons, Fair use, Public Domain, and Copyright laws visit some of those links to help you find out a bit more.
