Mullinix, Tammy

LS521 SP02

Copyright, Piracy, and Ethics

Copyright, Piracy, and Ethics ©

Scenario One

Mr. Jamweimer gives our school the copy of the computer program he bought over the internet. The Media Specialist thanks him for thinking of the school, but refuses to use the program because it is piracy. When a person buys a computer program they have to agree to the licencing agreement. (That is the long agreement you have to accept before the program will load on your computer.) The person buying the program is buying with the assumption it will only be used on a single computer and not many different computers.

To allow other people to use or copy the program is stealing the profit from the Manufacturer. If the school wants the program they must purchase from the manufacturer multiple licenses. This is no different than buying a new novel making copies of it and giving them to all your friends or even selling them and making profit off of someone else’s work.

Many copyright laws & ethics are confusing and most people don’t read the whole license agreement, but the one thing that is spelled out is that the purchaser is the only person allow to use the software and any violation of this could result in lawsuit from the manufacturer.

Scenario Two

You find a glittering, wonderful website…

First of all, just because there is not a little copyright symbol on the work, does not mean that it is not copyrighted. As soon as it is published on the web it becomes copyrighted. The only way that you could use this legally is to ask the website owner for permission or he has to have a notice posted granting permission. If the website owner does have a notice for permission, you also have to determine whether or not this individual ‘stole’ the graphics/clipart or is it his own design/free domain.

Once you have determined that everything is on the up-and-up and have permission (or a generic notice granting permission) from the website owner, everything is pretty much fair game!