Copyright

When it comes to the discussion of copyright it comes to a point where the discussion leads to nowhere. Even though corporations and individuals claim copyright on their creations for originality, are they really original? When analyzing these copyrighted works it is important to realize that to copyright something you are really only copyrighting the particular way that the author has expressed themselves. Under the "fair use" policy which is defined as the "various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." (U.S Copyright Office) anyone can effectively examine, alter or use a portion of a copyrighted work as long as it does not actually infringe (copy the expression exactly) on another's work.  The concept of what makes a work original, whether it be a specific attribute, a context or a idea create a unique problem set for anyone wishing to protect their "original" ideas and thus creates a plethora of problems usually only solvable by litigation.

In the reading there was a pretty clear that the goal was to dissuade students from copying materials outright. This includes not properly citing sources and copying content outright. I remember when I was in high school the plagiarism was so bad one year that we actually had to all go to the gymnasium for a special school wide event to discuss the consequences of it, and how to avoid it. Students in my class just outright copied each other verbatim usually without little resistance from most of the teachers. The though process was that if everyone did it then there's no way that the school would discipline everyone. I see this attitude lots of times online, people will outright copy blog postings of others and publish them as their own. This is especially evident on technology blogs.

This reading was pretty informative on how to avoid copyright issues, I find a lot of the things it has to offer relevant to my business profession of web design as well. All in all this was a pretty decent and well structured reading.