Copyright & Fair Use

Copyright laws protect the creator of original work from others completley duplicating their work to present as their own. It is important to have copyright laws, not only to protect the creator of original work, but also to promote creativity and ideas in the community. If everyone just used someone elses idea word for word or mirroring the exact same image of the idea, the evolution of culture and ideas would ultimatley suffer and quite frankly, the world would be a very boring place. In our academics, using copyrighted material in the wrong way is not only wrong and could potentially get you in trouble with the school, it is also illegal. An example of copyright law being broken is a televised program, like a hockey game, being video recorded and placed on youtube video. Fortunately for everyone, there are ways to use copyrighted material legally in a way that does benefit society. It is through fair use. Fair use is the use of copyrighted material only to illustrate your point. It does not mean you can simply copy and paste copyrighted work and use it as your own in your work. Fair use of copyrighted material is only appropriate in situations like commenting or critiquing or copyrighted material, illustration or example of copyrighted material, incidental use of copyrighted material, culturural rescue, launching discussion with the use of copyrighted material, and mashups of copyrighted material. In these different ways, you are able to spread new ideas through the use of old ones. In this way, culture is preserved and evolved. An example of fair use is a television program, like the hockey game in the above video, being video recorded, but this time, the video is used to show the reaction of a bar crowd. I have one question for this weeks topic. As a business major, I have been wondering if there are any restrictions or rules that apply to fair use when it comes to commercial use. If you use copyrighted material with fair use, can your work be sold?