Fair Use 101 February 20, 2010

(The First of Five Parts)

Due to the popularity of my last webserial, I have decided to try it again on another issue; one that is far too important to contain in just one post.  

FAIR USE

Photo courtesy of mrselfdestruckt at Photo Bucket

What exactly is “fair use”?  In it’s most basic form it is defined as:

“The conditions under which you can use material that is copyrighted by someone else without paying royalties.”

It can also mean the doctrine of U.S. copyright law that regulates the use of other people’s work without their permission.  

For years authors, artists and songwriters have been protected from having their work stolen.  But the internet has opened a whole new can of worms.

Who is protecting the information we blast out into cyberspace?  The articles bloggers write, the artwork that pops up on Google Image, and even the status updates we post on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter?  

It turns out we are giving away a lot more than our opinion…

(To be continued)