Today I watched A Fair(y) Use Tale. This youtube movie was created to helped people understand everthing about copyright law. If you choose not to watch this movie I will explain its basic priciples to you in the following paragraphs. I will aslo give you various other sources that you can go to learn more about copyright law.

When learning about a copright, you first need to know what it is. The movie gave a copyright the definition of a perminently fixed original work. A work that is copyrighted can only be used by its owner. A work can be copyrighted are things like books, music, dances, and movies, and even pictures. The one thing that can not be copyrighted is an idea. So if someome says they have a copyright for thinking that potatoes are good, they are obviously lieing. So now you ask. How long does a copyright last? Well, copyrights vary in time length and are set depending on the product and a owner's wants. Some copyrights last forever and some may only last for 20 years. Within a copyright's duration, a person must ask for and sometimes even pay for the work from the copyright's owner. However, people may take certian pieces of a work that is copyrighted if that person's use of the work are used for things like teaching, news reporting, parodies, or critical comments. Their are also certian rules on what you can borrow from a work of copyrighted material. These rules regulate how much of the work you can borrow, the nature of the work you borrow, and prevent you from changing the works value in the marketplace. A fair use of copyrighted content has to be legally defensible and can not be questioned as stealing.

I bet you are still wondering about what happens when a copy right ends on a work. Once a copyright reaches its expiration date, the work it protects becomes public domain. That means that any person in society can use the work for free and use it anywhere in their lives. Public domain of works helps to create a thriving society with useful ideas.

Copyright laws are a big idea in the news of today. Michael Moore who is famous for his political works of "Farenheit 911" and "Sicko" dicusses in the linked video what he feels about people downloading his works.

While I was perusing the internet I found a good powerpoint presentation on copyrights and I wanted to include it into this blog for you to look at. I aslo incuded the website of the U.S. Copyright Laws in case you decide you want to look into furthur detail, the rules and regualtions of our country's philosophy on copyrights. If you do look at it you can see the many facets of what a copyright involves. You can see that the laws are set up in a form of our constitution. It changes adn has amendments as it moves through various times and new situations.

I hope what information I gave helps you to better understand how copyrights work in our society.