Copyright and Fair Use
Copyrights and Fair Use agreements are laws in place to
protect creators. After all, if you devote hundreds of hours to writing a book
or if you made a new scientific discovery you wouldn’t want someone passing
your hard work off as his or her own. However, in your book or published paper
you might want to cite another creators work i.e. including a poem or scholarly
quote. Is the considered plagiarism? Of course not! While it may not always be
clear when you can use someone else work and when it’s stealing The University of Maryland is helping distinguish! The university has extensive guidelines for
teachers and students, it can be found here. 
In order for something to become copyrighted material it
must meet the following criteria: fixation, originality, and minimal creativity.
Fixation can be fulfilled any number of ways, for example, a written message,
an audio recording, or even a photographed image. Originality means the work has to come for
the creators brain itself, but if a work comes from another source and is
sufficiently re-imagined then the new can be copyrighted. Lastly, minimal
creativity must occur. This creativity can be small just as long as something
isn’t taken verbatim.
All of these rules are in place to aid in collaboration
while protecting us as creators. It is important to be aware of these laws not
only to avoid the serious penalties, but also so we can respect authorship.
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