A legal minefield explored

Copyright is very important when using images or material from the internet (or anywhere else). These links will help to explain some of the issues (Links open in a new window).

Internet Detective
All you need to know to ‘Wise up to the Web’ can be found at Internet Detective. Another excellent free online tutorial from RDA Virtual Training Suite designed to help students, and tutors, develop their Internet research skills.

FACT
The federation against copyright theft FACT focuses on film and broadcasting, but much of what it says has relevance to the Internet too.  It has a good FAQ section.

Art Junction
Art Junction offers a useful insight into copyright issues for teachers.

Creative Commons Deed
The new type of Attribution Non Commercial Share-Alike licence can now be used for new technology applications and shared content websites.  For example: shared photo albums (Flickr); blogs (online diaries); social networking sites (My Space); video (U Tube). Find out more at the Creative Commons Deed site.

Who pays in the Network Era?
An interesting article outlining some copyright issues, by David H Rothman on The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning. Its from 2001, and relates to American schools, but some issues are still very valid, It was written before the use of Creative Commons licensing (see above).

GNU
Sometimes when you get Free or Open Source (FOS) software, it is licenced under a General Public Licence (GNU). In laymans terms this means that the user can run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. It gives freedom to those who would like more input into the development of computer applications to ensure they fit their and their communities needs.

This type of software is becoming more and more popular in the public domain. Some examples that you might have heard of are Linux (operating system); Moodle (online course development resource); Wikipedia (online enclopedia).