Understanding copyright and fair use by a rookie blogger

    Since I know everyone reading this is an avid fan of mine I am sure you read my blog on "What is a PLN from a rookie bloggers perspective." If not your in for a real treat. 😁 At the end of my blog I had my son make me a gif for my reader's amusement. Like many people I did not necessarily think about who owned the rights to what or whether I had permission to actually use the picture that he manipulated. Below is the gif again for your perusal. 

 

 

What is copyright? 

"Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression." It begins the moment it is created and fixed. This is straight from copyright.gov. But what does it mean?

 

Original means something independently created  by a human author and have some form of creativity.

Fixed means that is is captured in some kind of "permanent medium such that the work can be perceived, reproduced, communicated for more than a short time." https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/ The example is gives is something that can be written down or recorded. 

Tangible means something that can be touched but tangible form of expression means something produced in a way that is audio or visual expression. In other words their is a product someone can access.

 

The key takeaway to everything is protected by copyright the moment it is produced and captured in a permanent medium. An author does not have to register their creation to be protected. When in doubt do not use the creation, or get permission to use the creation.

So can I use anything that is someone's creation?

    According to https://www.theedublogger.com/copyright copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years after their death. Now I do not know about you but the earliest I could have access to an artist's creation is 1954 🤯. Once a copyright expires the creation becomes part of the public domain which means I do not have to get permission to use it. 

 

Okay but where do I find public domain resources? Googling public domain brings up several hits. In this case I was interested  in images and in this case I found rawpixel public domain pictures. https://www.rawpixel.com/search/tornado?page=1&path=3&sort=curated

 

There is also creative commons. Creative commons provides copyright licenses and public domain tools as a standardized way to grant copyright permissions. https://creativecommons.org/

It has six licenses that an author can assign to their works. It also has a seventh license called CC0 (CC Zero) that allows creators to give up their copyright rights and allow their works to be used by the public domain. I recommend you visit https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/ to see the different licenses and what they mean. 

 But I thought I had "fair use" protection?

    Fair use is a legal doctrine that allows for freedom of expression by allowing the use of copy-righted material in certain circumstances. These certain circumstances include:

1.  How is the creation being used, for example is it being used for commercial or nonprofit education purposes, etc?
   
2. What is the nature of the work, for example is it an imaginative or factual work?
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used, for example how much quality and quantity was used?
4. Effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the work , for example could using this "creation" result in loss if revenue?

The copyright.gov explains in better detail https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/index.html and also has a YouTube video https://youtu.be/IFhF_tHrj4s?si=HJXrwbdu3jatXdhO.

So did I violate copyright?

    The whole point of this blog was to examine whether I violated copyright law with my picture. My son originally got the tornado from Shutterstock. Shutterstock photos are royalty free once you have purchased them. Keep in mind royalty free does not mean copyright free. https://support.shutterstock.com/s/article/Can-I-use-Images-on-my-website?language=en_US Shutterstocks strictly details how you can use the images. We do not have a subscription plan with Shutterstock so we did not pay for that tornado. Bottom line is that we did use an image protected by copyright. However, there are many more under the public domain we can use without worrying about copyright.