Copyright is a term I’ve encountered repeatedly through life; from seeing the \u00a9 symbol on the inside cover of a novel, to reading the copyright disclaimer at the beginner of a rental movie. Hearing the term copyright, or seeing the symbol, has always given me the impression that a particular document (or movie, or set of instructions) has undergone some sort of legal process to earn the \u00a9 stamp on it.\u00a0The most surprising thing I learned after listening to Melanie Wrobel’s informative podcast about copyright, is how informal and even subjective the copyright process really can be.<\/p>\n
Copyrighting your work, can literally be as simple as typing the \u00a9 symbol beside your name, along with a year and the phrase All Rights Reserved<\/em>. How much more easy can it be? No lawyers required, no standardized checklist to complete,\u00a0 and no paperwork. Just type the words, and your work is suddenly protected. The only thing I found more surprising than this, is how your work is actually protected under copyright law even in the absence<\/em> of the foreboding \u00a9. In Canada, by default, all unique expressions of work are automatically copyrighted.<\/p>\n While this might seem like copyright law could make it impossible for someone to use another’s work for any purpose, this is actually not true. Copyright law as explained by Wrobel, is actually quite reasonable and allows for fair dealing.\u00a0<\/em>Fair dealing is a concept that allows copyrighted works to be used for several purposes without the owners permission. As a Masters student, the purposes that I was most pleased to see listed were private study, critique, review and education. After identifying that someone’s work is being used for one of these purposes, a student could then conduct a six-point self-check, to determine if their usage would indeed be considered fair<\/em>. This type of subjective informality, also came as quite a surprise to me.<\/p>\n Regardless of my thoughts on copyright itself, Wrobel’s podcast is a recording with clear, usable information on copyright that I’m confident I will return to in the future as I embark on larger research projects throughout the MALAT program.<\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Wrobel, M. (2016).\u00a0A Guide to Copyright<\/em>\u00a0[Audio recording]. Retrieved from https:\/\/moodle.royalroads.ca\/moodle\/mod\/page\/view.php?id=347413<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright is a term I’ve encountered repeatedly through life; from seeing the \u00a9 symbol on the inside cover of a novel, to reading the copyright disclaimer at the beginner of a rental movie. Hearing the term copyright, or seeing the… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0111\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}