Many
people incorrectly assume that anything they find on the Internet
is in the public domain and can be safely copied and shared.
Legally, what would be copyright infringement if the
material is taken from a print publication is also a copyright
infringement if the material is taken from an Internet publication.
The same penalties apply regardless of the source of the copyrighted
material.
Pickup in the parking lot analogy
A pickup truck in a municipal parking lot is the best analogy
I can think of to explain copyright laws when Internet sources
are used.
Let's say Homer the Hometown Handyman parks his pickup truck
full of tools in the municipal parking lot. The tools are
sitting out where anyone can take them.
Since the pickup truck full of tools is out in the open in the
publicly owned parking lot does that give you the right to take
one of Homer's saws without his permission?
No, it does not.
Would it be OK for you to use one of Homer's saws without his
permission if you were going to use it to do a job for your church
or some other not-for-profit organization?
No, it would not.
The written content, images, music, and computer programs you
find on the Internet are the intellectual property equivalent
of Homer's saws. The fact that they are "parked" in
clear public view on the Internet doesn't make them public property.
What does using material mean?
Like many other terms in the English language arts curriculum,
using material has a different meaning within the context
of a discussion of copyright laws than it has
in everyday conversation.
Let's go back to the pickup truck analogy. If you were to take
one of Homer's saws and try it out on your kitchen table, you
would say you had used the saw.
Similarly, if you found on the Internet Homer's article on how
to use a handsaw, downloaded it, and read it on your computer,
you'd probably say you had "used that material."
In the everyday, conversational sense of the term use,
you did use Homer's material. However, you did not use
Homer's material in the legal sense of the term as it applies
to intellectual property.
What changes what we conversationally call "using material"
into a situation that falls under copyright laws? When
the Internet is the information source, the trigger is sharing
the material you copied with someone else.
In other words, in the eyes of the law you use
Homer's article if you do such things as:
-
Attach a copy to an email you send to someone
else.
-
Insert a copy of Homer's photograph of a
handsaw into your research paper about tools.
-
Quote information from Homer's article in
a term paper you are writing.
-
Paraphrase information from Homer's article
in a term paper you are writing.
-
Summarize information from Homer's article
in a term paper you are writing.
Hang on. We're going to explain how you can do things such as
these without infringing on anyone's copyright. Note the list
doesn't include all possible ways of using or misusing Internet
material, just common ones. (One of my copyrights
was infringed in a Twitter post.)
Implications for students
Students can save to their computer or a storage device materials
for their personal study or research without violating copyright.
However, students must not share all or part of
that information with anyone else without giving credit to their
source.
If they use even a small portion without appropriate credit they
are guilty of plagiarism.
If they use a larger portion without prior permission
they are guilty of infringing
copyright laws; whether Internet or non-Internet sources were
copied makes no difference.
Implications for teachers
It's unreasonable to think students won't download material from
the Internet. You and I have to teach them how to download without
violating copyright laws for the Internet or plagiarising someone
else's work.
We must be sure they know appropriate ways to create
hyperlinks so they can direct friends to information
without violating copyright.
We must be sure they know how to distinguish their work from
copied work. If students cut and paste information into a
word processing file, they are setting themselves up for trouble:
it's way too easy for the attribution to be separated from the
content.
Better alternatives are:
