Introduction to Copyright
Two Helpful Definitions:
IN LAYMAN'S TERMS:
If you are the creator of a work, copyright law secures your exclusive right to control who can produce copies or adaptations of your work. This is not to say that copyright issues are as simple as this, a lot of subtleties and international variations, but that's the gist of it. If you create something, and it fits the definition of a creative work, you get to control who can make copies of it and how they make copies. You can also sell or licence this right, or, if you do the work for somebody who hired you to do it, they buy this right in advance. This definition is taken from A Brief Intro to Copyright
A LEGAL DEFINITION:
"Copyright is a form of intellectual property. Intellectual property includes intangible assets such as works of authorship, ideas, and business goodwill. Intellectual property laws protect these intangible assets. Protection is secured through four separate bodies of law, patent law, trade secret law, trademark law, and copyright law. Patent law protects new, useful, and nonobvious inventions. Trade secret law protects any formula, pattern, practice, device or compilation of information used in business that provides an advantage over competitors who do not know or use it. Trademark law protects words and symbols that are used in connection with products and services and are tangible representations of business goodwill associated with tho se products and services. Finally, copyright law protects the expressions contained in original works of authorship." An Introduction to Copyright Law
Copyright and Intellectual Property Issues
This Power Point tutorial was presented in 2005 by Dr. Jud Copeland (Director, The Arnold Ledoux Library, Louisiana State University at Eunice) at the Louisiana Library Association annual conference in Alexandria, LA. It defines copyright, fair use and intellectual property, answers questions about how information is copyrighted, about what is protected and for what time period, and gives helpful links to government copyright agencies and other entities.
Helpful Links (on the World Wide Web)
From Stanford University's excellent discussion of Fair Use to the U. S. Government's Official Copyright site, the World Wide Web contains volumous information pertaining to Copyright and Copyright Law. Click here for a page of useful links to such web sites: Copyright Sites on the Web
The Fair Use Checklist (Word Document)
This quick checklist, based on a document by Prof. Kenneth Crews and the Copyright Management Center Staff at Indiana University-Purdue University, was created by Dr. Jud Copeland (Director, The Arnold Ledoux Library, Louisiana State University at Eunice) to help educators, librarians, and others evaluate content uses to determine if FAIR USE applies. It lists criteria favoring fair use, and criteria opposing fair use.
The Teach Act Checklist (Word Document)
This quick checklist, which cites as its source Georgia Harper of the University of Texas at Austin, was created by Dr. Jud Copeland (Director, The Arnold Ledoux Library, Louisiana State University at Eunice). It lists criteria to test whether or not your use of copyrighted material falls within the TEACH Act definition.
Copyright: A Selective Bibliograhy
The following link will take you to a selective list of books that can be found in the Ellender Memorial Library on the subject of copyright, sorted by Dewey call number, and to a list of important recent articles on Copyright issues. To find more books, search the library's Online Public Access Catalog using the keyword copyright, and to find more articles, visit the library's electronic databases: Selective Bibliography on Copyright
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