St. Bonaventure faculty hosted its first copyright workshop on Tuesday, Feb. 24 to inform the Bonaventure community about the importance of copyright laws.
Ann Tenglund, associate director of libraries, and Carol McNall, professor of journalism and mass communication, hosted the copyright workshop. The workshop addressed how students, producers of new ideas, need to know the laws concerning their creative ideas and creations.
“Students are the future creators of art and other artistic creations, such as art, music, poetry, literature and many more,” McNall said. “It is nice for them to know their rights when it comes to copyrights. They should know that they don’t have to register their own creations in order for them to be considered their own.”
Copyright is the exclusive legal right given to the originator of an idea by having legal ownership of that idea, unless a contract or agreement determines otherwise
This workshop was meant for faculty as well. It reminded them of how to respect copyright rules, even in the classroom. An education company is suing Georgia State University committed copyright infringement becasue the university used online courses that it found online. Ultimately the university wasn’t paying for the information; while the education company still owned the rights to it.
“As we get more online courses as a university, we cannot mess up,” Karla Bright, instructional support specialist, said. “If we hold our students to a standard, faculty and staff have to do the same.”
Tenglund encouraged the school to be careful, and not make the same mistakes other schools did. Bright said she feels as faculty they hold their students to a high standard of originality, therefore they have to set an example and do the same.
The last major change to copyright laws was when Disney lobbied for copyright extensions. According to McNall, since there has been a lot of changes in the world since 1976 she said she feels as if congress should take time and look at the laws.
