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Education Copyright Law The Nuts and Bolts of Education Copyright Law It is a wonderful thing that Education Copyright Law is available for educators. It isn’t only teachers that can take advantage of education copyright law. Students are also covered under education copyright law -- to a degree. Teachers are able to use copyrighted materials in their classroom and make copies of them. Students are also able to use copyrighted materials in school projects. The key to education copyright law is how often a teacher or student uses copyrighted material, in what way they are using it and how many copies they have of it. It is important that teachers and students do not cross the line of education copyright law or they could be in for some stiff penalties. It helps many students and teachers to learn what exactly is not copyrighted. Any work that is in the public domain is not copyrighted and can be used in school and for school projects. Work that is not in the public domain is copyrighted and if you use it you should make sure you fall within the fair use or education copyright law regulations. Many people do not know what exactly fair use copyright regulations are. When you are trying to see if you can use another’s words, you should keep a few things in mind. The answer to the following questions will help you gage whether you would be violating a copyright. First, are you transforming someone else’s work or are you copying it directly? If you are using another person’s work directly, for what purpose and how much of the original author’s work are you using? Many publishing companies have set rules on how much material they will allow to be quoted in other sources. Some of these ranges start at 100 words or less. However, there are truly no standards to go by, so be careful. You can not assume that keeping your copying fewer than 50 words will allow you to pass under the radar – especially if the original piece is hovering around 125 words itself! There is a greater amount of room to maneuver when it comes to technical writing. For instance, if you are writing a report on something that involves a lot of reporting from an expert, you would probably need to quote more of their work than you would a fiction novelist’s work. The fair use copyright law enables people to use portions of material that is copyrighted for the purposes of criticism or as commentary. Individuals who are involved in the distance education field should take a look at the TEACH Act that was made into law in 2002. This Act clearly outlines the requirements that a university or school must be in compliance with when it comes to transmitting copyrighted works via the Internet. The TEACH Act allows students and teachers to transmit copyrighted works, but they must be within certain guidelines. If the school or university cannot meet these guidelines, the material that is being transmitted via the Internet needs to fall within the fair use copyright act – or the individuals involved need to have permission from the copyright owner. If you are an educator and you are using copyrighted material make sure it falls within the education copyright law.

People caught of copyright infringement Why Are People Caught of Copyright Infringement? When you hear of people caught of copyright infringement, many different things can happen to them. First of all, copyright infringement is both a civil and criminal crime, so people caught of copyright infringement are likely to get both sued and tried in criminal court. Because of the nature of copyright laws, if and when people are caught of copyright infringement, it’s likely that they will get repercussions from far and wide. First of all, people are always looking for people violating copyright laws. Copyright owners and/or agents surf the internet, so they may find the violations themselves. Usually, is someone finds that people are violating their copyright rights, they’ll notify the person or entities involved and ask that they take the content down, if it’s available on the Internet. They do this by either asking the person directly to take it down, or demanding of the website server to take it down (which they will, immediately, and probably suspend the account) If the person or entity hosting the violation doesn’t take it down, more serious actions will be taken, such as a lawsuit or criminal charge. People caught for copyright infringement do not automatically go to jail, although some entities like major television, music, and movie publishers and distribution channels may lead you to believe otherwise. For the example of YouTube.com, there are many people caught for copyright infringement, but they only need to take down the material. In many cases, YouTube.com will take the material down before the poster (the person who put the copyrighted information on the site to begin with) has a chance to see the warning. Other times, a work will be present on a peer to peer file sharing service, such as Kazaa or Napster, and the host of said service will blame the end user (you!). So, even if you found a file on a file sharing service, such as Kazaa, doesn’t mean the copyright is open for you to take it. Many people caught of copyright infringement have been found through these peer to peer networks, and it has been found time and again that the user that downloads the material gets charged and not the file sharing service. Be careful, if you are ever to use a peer to peer service such as Kazaa (or bit torrent, which is the code/program for another type of peer to peer file distribution tool) that you’re only downloading, and sharing, items that aren’t copyrighted works – or you could be punished severely. Sometimes, people are caught of file sharing from their IP addresses – because they download something from a secure site, their servers can track your IP address (your unique location on the internet, four sets of numbers, separated by periods, with at most three numbers in each set – i.e. 216.239.51.100 which is the IP address of Google.com). So even if you think you’ve bypassed the copyright law, you can still be found years later by tracing that IP address. There are many ways to find people caught of copyright infringement, you can search through Google.com or look through newspaper databases. One thing, however, remains the same in all these cases – the people are downloading, sharing, or in some other way using copyrighted materials. The only problem is, especially in the internet age, is that even if you’re using something anonymously, you can still be tracked – and prosecuted – for the infringement. Be careful, in all you download or use, have the rights to use the item – sometimes it’s as simple as asking permission that will keep you from getting sued or sent to jail.

Communication Key to a Better Work Environment Everyone knows the story of A Christmas Carole. On Christmas Eve, poor Bob Cratchit, who is working late again, spends his day working up the courage to ask his boss, Mr. Scrooge, if he can have Christmas Day off from work to spend with his family. When he finally does get up the nerve to ask, Mr. Scrooge lets forth a tirade over lazy people using Christmas as an excuse to have a day a off from work. This fictional story unfortunately rings true for a lot of people who have to work up the courage to ask for things from their employers. An employee who has to feel about their employer the way Bob Cratchit felt about Mr. Scrooge is not a very happy and productive employee. To get the most of out of your workers, you have to create a much more hospitable working environment. To create a better working environment, keeping the lines of communication open is absolutely crucial. How does communication work in your office? Do you get the impression that everyone is walking around on eggshells around you? While this kind of fear from your employees may be good for your ego in some senses, it is really bad for your business. When your employees don’t feel like they can talk to you, you will lose control over what is going on with your business. You may be the boss, but your employees are the ones who are actually on the front lines. To know what is really going on out there, you need your employees to communicate honestly with you. If they feel that you are unapproachable, they will hide problems and concerns from you, and you won’t be able to act to fix them. You can’t expect to run your business with half of the information about what is actually going on, and so your business will suffer for your “mean boss” routine. There are still other problems with creating an office environment in which your employees feel like you are unapproachable. In general, there will be a dark cloud over the office when you are around. The stress will keep employee morale low, and employees with low morale are employees with low productivity. Besides, who wants to work hard for someone they cannot approach or who doesn’t show they any respect? Shutting down those lines of communication will definitely affect your bottom line as employees “phone it in” because they don’t feel invested in making your business a success. If you want a better working environment, you have to improve the lines of communication. If there has been a communication breakdown in the past, take the time to address it with your staff. If you staff is small, talk to them each one on one, letting them know that your door is always open and that you want more regular communication with them. If you have a larger staff, schedule a meeting to address the issue. Weekly office meetings are a great way to keep communication channels open and swap ideas in the office environment. If weekly meetings are not feasible, find some way of touching base with your staff on a regular basis, either through weekly emails or a weekly newsletter. Also, you should encourage your staff to communicate with each other. Sharing information among the staff is a great way to generate fresh ideas and fresh approaches to problems. If your office is suffering from a communication problem, make nipping it in the bud a priority. The pay off will be more productive workers and a whole lot less stress. Who knew work could actually be a pleasant place to be?