COPYRIGHT

I had already known a bit about copyright laws before the class especially in relation to movies being publicly viewed, but there were still a few surprising things to me. First, I had no idea that copyrights were protected in the constitution and that surprised me. I also found it intriguing to know that the laws are somewhat vague and it depends on the people judging the case at the time to see what side they will choose. During the jeopardy game in class, there were times I thought that the copyright was not violated because of one thing, when it really wasn't violated because of some other weird reason such as market values. I have seen copyrights being violated all of the time in schools and outside of them. I had a teacher that would copy books and give them out to the students rather than purchasing multiple textbooks for everyone within the class. I have also had teachers show a film for class that had nothing to do with what the class was learning. Outside of classes there are waaaay too many instances to count of people breaking copyright laws. One of the primary ways this is done is through downloading music illegally. Other ways people break copyright laws are through copy and pasting images and watching movies online for free. The internet has made stealing things much easier and copyright is struggling to keep up. It is important to teach copyright respect to students because they will be using the internet and using information they found and they do not want to be penalized for it ever. I would do it to inform them on what is right and wrong so that they are not getting in trouble doing illegal things. I will do this by making a good example of myself and teaching the students to use their "own" pictures and designs to make art. I think this is a good way of discouraging students from stealing other people's photographs and designs.