Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Copyright or Cheatingright?
After reading the articles and other blogs I must agree with just about everyone else, although I still hate to conform, that copyright laws are more confusing than the tax code. And a lot harder to enforce.Even though I have knowingly broken the law by stealing hotel towels (some are sooo soft), eating grapes in the grocery store and even copying CDs and videos I have never done it for financial benefit. It seems to me that's what the copyright laws are all about, MONEY!!!! And in fact the laws make criminals out of ordinary people by crimes committed out of ignorance. I can think of several incidents since I have been at ULV where I have used pictures off the web in presentations and I suppose the argument can be made that doing something for a grade could be misidentified as financial gain, but that was never my intent. But at least I can say I never violated the law on the Internet while in high school. Probably because there was not Internet when I was in high school. Ha Ha.Some of the sites like Creative Commons have great intentions but are handicapped by the confusing wordings of the law and in reality are not very helpful. Both the public and the lawyers need to be better educated on this subject. It is wrong to use someone else's work without credit but when you put something on the Internet for the whole world to see it is going to be used for better or worse by somebody.I guess it all comes down to personal responsibility. If you don't want somebody to use your stuff, don't leave it where they can get it.