COMM 317: Copyright, assignment for next week

Let's start with the assignment so I don't forget it (you wouldn't forgive me if I did that ... right)? Get our textbook out. It's "Media Ethics: Issues and Cases," by Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins. If you like philosophy, read the Foreword by Clifford Christians of UIUC. If you don't like philosophy, still read it. It raises some ideas that are worth thinking about, even if we usually don't like to talk about them. Main part of the assignment: Read Chapter 1 (pp. 1-17). A warning: It's a 17-page crash course in ethics (another subject we don't like to talk about). It's heavy going. So start early. Skim-read it a couple of times first, then go back over it. It will not go away. -- pe

For today, we'll take up copyright.

Where would you go to find out about copyright issues? The AP Stylebook is always good, of course, and I'm sure by now you all keep copies under your pillow for those sleepless nights. But where would be even better?

Bingo! You got it!! The U.S. Copyright Office website has a Frequently Asked Questions page. Let's go there.

Keep this window open, though. We'll come back to it.

Later: Hope you enjoyed the copyright page. Welcome back. Last week I had a piece published on a website called EverythingDulcimer.com, a niche publication for amateur musicians who play the Appalachian dulcimer. On the theory you might be interested in seeing how copyright issues play out in practice (even though the content of the article is of interest only to people who play that instrument), let's go there. Link below to Everything Dulcimer's directory of articles ...

http://everythingdulcimer.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=14&Itemid=113

... and my piece is No. 9 in the directory, called "Drones, Picks and Popsicle Sticks."

Let's start by looking at the bottom of the directory page and the bottom of the first page of my piece. The website owns the copyright, since I assigned all rights when they accepted it for publication.

Next, let's look at the picture at the top. The line drawing that shows a mountaineer playing a dulcimer on the porch of his cabin. It's from a magazine article that appeared in 1915. So it's in the public domain. That's why I used it.

Next, skipping over my golden prose, let's click through to the next page. See the picture of the guy playing the dulcimer? The one I shot as a staff photo for The Knox County News in Tennessee, if you look at the cutline. A couple of copyright issues here. One is that I shot the picture when I worked for the paper. That means they owned the copyright, since I was on their staff. But the paper went out of business in 1974 (long story, involving a guy who was picked up by sheriff's deputies trying to board a bus in Jefferson City, Tenn., amid wholesale allegations of violation of the bad check law). Since it was my photo, I can argue that am exercising a secondary, or residual, right to use it. But that would be contested in court, if there were anybody around to contest it on behalf of The Knox County News.

Last copyright issue is the most interesting of all, because you can learn how to use it. Click through to Part 2, headlined "Europe: 'Remember the Buzzing of Bees'." You'll see a reproduction of a picture in an old book by a Michael Praetorius. If you look at the list of sources at the end of my piece, you'll see it comes from Wikimedia Commons. The Wikipedia websites have been very active in promoting use of artwork and other intellectual property in the public domain and under what is know as a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is new, and its implications are still unclear. But it looks like it's going to be an important source for people to use the intellectual property of others for non-commercial or not-for-profit purposes and with some rights reserved. Especially as an educator, I think it's worth keeping an eye on.