The quest for knowledge never ends so my inquiry into the laws of media must continue on. It was Kent State’s spring recess this past week and I am not ready to get back to the daily grind of school just yet.In a previous post I spoke briefly on laws that apply to bloggers and social media users. I will continue on with this topic in this post. I plan to cover copyright as it is something I think all students of social media, including myself, need to be educated on.
The Basics
A copyright (title 17, U.S. Code) is “a form of protection provided to authors of ‘original works of authorship’ – literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works, both published and unpublished,” according to the United States Copyright Website.
Any work created on or after January, 1, 1978 is automatically protected by copyright laws from the moment of creation, for the life of the creator, plus 70 years. Original works must be registered with the Copyright Office to ensure protection. With the creation of the Internet new regulations needed to be created.
Circular 66
Circular 66, the document that covers online works, was created to answer questions on online copyrights. Personally I like the name circular 66, it sounds like Route 66 or Area 51 to me. Sometimes I am easily amused.
US Route 66 is a historic pathway used to head west.
An interesting statement I found while researching C-66 is “for all online works other that computer programs and databases, the registration will extend only to the copyrightable content of the work as received in the Copyright Office and identified as the subject of the claim. To me this means when you want to get something copyrighted it must be as specific as possible. Being overly cautious could pay off here.
A database is described as a group of updates that are either published or unpublished, and frequently updated. These databases can be copyrighted for a three-month period within the same year under one copyright.
A group registration for serials and newsletters is available for media that is published on a weekly basis or less often. Daily newsletters and media published more often than once a week is also copyrightable. These must be collective works to be considered for a copyright.
An Example
I thought I’d give an example of how to cite a copyrighted image. ehow.com gives thorough instructions on how to cite images on blogs. I must say, before this I did not know that this is how images are supposed to be cited.
Giant glasses and flowers from a trip to Philly
This is a picture I took on a trip to Philadelphia with the Kent chapter of PRSSA two years ago. To correctly site this image it would start with the author’s last name followed by a comma and the author’s first name. The title of the work is next in parenthesis and a short description of the photo is next. So far we have the following example:
Egut,Amanda “Martini Glasses.” glasses
After that would be the main title of the Website where the image was found. This information would be in italics. Next is the date the site was published. After the publication date is the URL is brackets.
So a finished citation would be look like this:
Egut.Amanda “Martini Glasses.” glasses The Right Balance January 2009 [http://www.therbalance.com].
Disclaimer
Remember that this blog is just for fun and a school project. In no way is any of the information I offer legal advice, rather it is meant to provide the basic background information on topics I find interesting.
I feel better about posting images online now, and look forward to enhancing my blog. I hope you like the content and keep reading. Until next week, keep up the research.
