Leah Dantinne

July 9, 2003

Copyright

Scenario #1

You find an outstanding World Wide Web site on the Internet and want your web page to contain some of the glittering wonderfulness of this site. You download and use what part of the web page without infringing on copyright. . .

The legal implications for taking these actions really depend on what you plan to use your site for. If you are in education, you may not be facing the same problems you would if you were developing a commercial or public web page. If you are taking photographs or illustrations, you should limit them to less then five or under ten percent to be safe. If the part you are taking is actually words, you should only use ten percent or less then 1,000 words. Finally, you must decide if your use will negatively affect the original work because even educational uses does not allow people to adversely change the original. If the nature of the material is that it is being used educationally then you should be okay but to be safe, I would give credit to the original source and only take a small amount of material.

Scenario #2

Mr. Jamweimer, the parent of one of our most intellectual students, has paid to download a wonderful computer software program for his little Einstein, Mr. Jamweimer wants “our school” to be the best and send a copy of the download file to be used by the students on the computers at school. The kids use it and win Nobel prizes in science, literature, physics, chemistry, and playground . . .

While Mr. Jamweimer’s intentions are good, his actions infringe on the law and he could be in trouble. Mr. Jamweimer is giving his software to another source which would not break copyright law but fair use of computer software. Fair use of Computer Software currently means that the buyer of the software is under the fair use agreement. Licensed software is another issue and in this situation, it is under agreement that copies and sharing of software is not allowed. Mr. Jamweimer should not share is software with the school because they have not licensed it. Mr. Jamweimer cannot use an educational defense because it is not being used for purely educational purposes and is actually in the public now that the students have won awards. Mr. Jamweimer’s situation is not uncommon because many people share software and break copyright and fair use rules unintentionally.