Learning about Copyright

Throughout our RRU courses, I feel like we have been reminded a few times ( rightfully so in my case, as I am/was a little rusty in academic writing) to make sure we had correct citations and were giving credit when credit was due.  For me, I always considered this being important as the authors do deserve the credit and it is crucial to not be plagiarizing.

As a teacher, I am use to the Copyright warning on all of out photocopies, and the 10% for text books etc. I sometimes have the Wild West Attitude that Wrobel explained, and often in my teaching life think that if I can find it I can use it.

However, I have never put to much thought into it, and how is affects me as a student.

After reviewing Melanie Wrobel’s A guide to Copyright presentation (2016), it reminded me about how Copyright is going to come into play, and the importance of remembering the specific rules around Copyright.

3 of the many things I did not know about Copyright laws here is Canada before Wrobel’s presentation were:

• Life of copyright is life of author + 50 years, and that is different then in the USA when it is +75 years. Canadian Copyright laws differ in a few ways to American Copyright laws.
• If writing a thesis, you will have to use Royal Roads Copyright permission letter to ask for permission when using other’s material. I am still a little unsure if this includes when you are paraphrasing, or if it is when you are using images or direct quotations. Something I will have to look into if I end up going down the thesis track.
• Copyright laws protect most works in Canada, even if there are no copyright restrictions, and that citations may not be enough.

Overall, I feel like I still have a lot to learn about Copyright and how it is going to affect the remainder of my writing here at Royal Roads University.

Wrobel, M. (2016) A Guide to Copyright [Video file]. Retrieved from https://moodle.royalroads.ca/moodle/mod/page/view.php?id=245370