This week I read a few articles about copyright laws and education, this subject is not foreign to me. Being a music major and also having made multiple albums, I have had to deal with copyrights before. But I have to admit that I still am fuzzy on what infringes on other peoples rights when it comes to this, maybe even more so now.
The articles I read had to do with "fair use" within the copyright laws. Fair use is when a copyrighted piece of work can be used for educational purposes as long as these four factors are weighed in and accounted for: 1. purpose of use 2. nature of work 3. amount used 4. effect on the market. The tricky part is assessing whether any of these four factors have actually been infringed on. For example, amount used; you're not allowed to show a whole piece of work but how much is too much? Or purpose of use: who's to say it wasn't for educational use or personal use?
I took a test after reading these articles to see if certain examples were infringing on copyright laws and I did quite poorly. This makes me not want to use any intellectual property out of fear of breaking the law. It seems to me that what is defined as breaking a copyright law changes from one case to another and that scares me.
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