COMM 317: Copyright / REQUIRED READING

Since the discussion of copyright in the AP Stylebook is much too brief, I went looking on the Internet this week for a good basic introduction to copyright law. And I found one! It's the online version of a brochure by, of all people, the U.S. Copyright Office. And it gives you all the basics of copyright. I'm not usually big on memorizing stuff, but I think you should commit to memory the following sections of the brochure: "What Is Copyright?"; "Who Can Claim Copyright?"; "What Is Not Protected by Copyright?"; How to Secure Copyright"; Publication"; and the bit about the "visually perceptible" c-in-a-circle dingbat that costitutes "Notice of Copyright." In other words, almost all the first part of the brochure (although you can safely skip over the part on international treaties if you promise to stay in Springfield between now and finals)!

See also the section on "Who Owns What?" in the University of Texas system's Crash Course in Copyright. It's a little more technical, but it's written specifically for people who are using copyrighted information in their own publications and therefore need to know.

Why should you know all this stuff? Two reasons: (1) it will be on the final exam; and (2) you will deal with copyrighted material every day of your working life. Most of what you produce on the job, by the way, will be considered "work for hire" unless you own your own business.

Copyright is grounded in a wider class of intellectual property law. It's well explained on the "WEX" website put up by by the Legal Information Institute of Cornell University. It's concise. It's clear. And it's easy to understand and remember. Here's how WEX defines intellectual property: "Intellectual Property is a broad class of property, similar to 'real estate' (land), and 'chattels' (movable physical goods)." That's important. People's words have value, just like any other property. So do pictures, songs or other products of the mind. But not ideas. It can be tricky.

But the basic principle couldn't be clearer. Words are property, which means they can be stolen. That means using somebody's copyrighted property without permission is treated as a form of theft.

The upshot: To use copyrighted information, you need written permission. The University of Texas' Crash Course in Copyright explains how to get the copyright holder's permission. Its content is licensed, by the way, under a Creative Commons license. It's a little beyond the scope of COMM 317, but Creative Commons is an interesting development, especially if you're interested in publication on the World Wide Web.

A footnote. Not sure what a dingbat is? Think it's another word for a journalism teacher? A journalism student? Well, maybe the former but certainly not the latter. But there's another meaning the word you ought to know.