With the advent of the internet, it's become easier and easier to collaborate and share ideas worldwide. But with that ease comes new sets of rules and laws concerning what data can be put where. Copyright laws have been around a long time, but fairly recently had to be added to to cover the internet. Just like you can't copy someones book and claim it as your own work, you can't copy a video or movie and legally post it as your own. All the time on YouTube you see videos being taken down due to copyright claims by Viacom, TWC, and other music and media groups. This is because whoever made the video may have used copyrighted content from one of those companies in their video. That's a no-no.
Which brings me to fair use. Fair use states that small clips or portions of media may be used verbatim if it's being used to criticize, teach, or research without having to give credit or payment to the original source. I watched a video recently where this professor did a whole lecture on Inception and used clips from the movie to add to his lecture. Under fair use, this is legal because he was using those copyrighted clips to teach. Fair use definitely has limits, but it's a good thing for the general public.
Creative commons is a form of copyright that helps foster creative and collaborative work. For example, if I were to make a short film, I could pre-authorize it for creative commons use so that others in the population could change or improve upon it. The original author still retains some rights, but not "all rights reserved" like with normal copyright.
The way I can use these three things in my classroom is #1, not infringing on someone's copyright and #2, teaching my kids that it's not okay to use someone else's work without properly mentioning who's work it was originally. I'm sure as the internet continues to evolve, these laws will evolve with it.
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