Unit 5: Copyright

Copyright is a complicated and somewhat controversial subject. The purpose of copyright laws is to protect an individual or organization's work, this includes, but is not limited to photographs, books, or videos. However, it is also meant to help foster creativity. Today copyright laws clearly favor companies and large organizations over individual creators and small organizations.

A prime example of this is current drama over fair use laws; we are seeing this all over the internet, but currently, YouTube is at the forefront. YouTube used to be a place that championed small creators, fair use, and transformative works. More and more often in recent years, YouTube is ignoring fair use laws in favor of punishing creators for reacting to, talking about, and making parodies of works owned by large corporations. Despite this, often when YouTubers flag each other for stealing work, the company tends to come back and say that the work was used under fair use; unless of course, the YouTuber making the complaint is backed by a large agency. We are more and more seeing YouTube videos like this one made by former Vine star Danny Gonzales talking about this topic. It only takes a few minutes to find dozens of news stories, articles, and blog posts about this issue, typically discussed in the same breath as demonetization. While this doesn't necessarily relate directly to digital history, it does illustrate just how subjective and convoluted these laws can be.

Some Other Points about Copyright Laws:

1.  Fair use, this is, as stated above, a particularly complicated point. I found this helpful information about fair use at copyright.gov. This quote from that article seems to sum up fair use well, "Courts evaluate fair use claims on a case-by-case basis, and the outcome of any given case depends on a fact-specific inquiry." (U.S. Copyright Office. n.d.)
2. Some good ways to avoid copyright issues are: using proper citations and hyperlinks; when in doubt asking permission or spending some time looking through information on copyrights and/or plagiarism is never a bad idea.   
3. According to Stanford University Libraries, most works created since 1923 are under copyright. 
4. The types of works protected by copyright laws can include, but aren't limited to, written works, photos, video, sound recordings, and even dances. (U.S. Copyright Office. n.d. )

When looking at local museum websites, I noted that the copyright information for them varied widely. While some including Alexandria Archaeology Museum are devoid of any more information than a copyright symbol and maybe a sentence or two at the bottom of the website, others like Manassas City, have a lot of information on and a dedicated section of their website to copyright.  

And on some websites, like the Cold War Museum's website, I was unable to find any copyright information. 

References

U.S. Copyright Office.  (n.d.). More Information on Fair Use. Retrieved from https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html 

U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.). Circular 1 Copyright Basics. Retrieved from https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ01.pdf

Stim, R. (2019, April 24). Welcome to the Public Domain. Retrieved from https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/