Fair Use Of Copyrighted Material

Fair use of copyrighted material or intellectual property, deals primarily with the ethnics of using another persons creative works. It is unethical to use another persons creative work for your own personal gain or profit. Copyrighted material such as books, videos, images and software should only be copied or used by getting permission from the persons who owns the rights to the material

There are many legal issues relative to fair use of copyrighted material. Inappropriate use of this material without the owners permission can result in a lawsuit where the violator has to compensate the owner. For example; a teacher who copy a book to distribute to all of his students is in violation of fair use, even if the teacher does not charge the students for the books. The person who owns the copyright has to give permission to allow the teacher to do this. Of course I could give many examples of that would be a copyright violation.

The copyright law defines fair use differently for education. For instance, If for some reason I copy an article out of a book and distribute it to my class would be a legal act. However if I charged my students for the article, then I would be in violation of the fair use of copyrighted material.

Fair use is determined on a case by case basis. If you are not educated about what is and what isn't legal, then I suggest you make an attempt to do so. There are serious implications for violators.