For this week in my technology class we talked about Copyright laws - specifically about the Fair Use laws. It basically says if you are using multimedia for educational purposes, you don't have to get permission from the copyright holder. Here's a few sites that have information on this Fair Use law:

CopyrightEducation.org

creativecommons.org

commons.wikimedia.org

freeplaymusic.com

us.fotolia.com



In conjunction with this assignment we were supposed to find two Youtube clips and evaluate their use of multimedia. Here's the first one. It's a song by Carrie Underwood called "Mama's Song"





I think this is a bad example of following copyright laws. First of all, the person who published this specifically said in her comments: "I don't own this song. All rights go to... whoever they belong to. Whoever that is, it's not me." She is quite blatantly admitting that she does not have a right to publish this song. Also, it's not an educational song. It's more just for entertainment which is one of the limitations to the Fair Use law. All in all, I think this lady is breaking the law.

The second video is from a show called "I Eat 33,000 Calories A Day", which airs on TLC.

The person who posted this video does not say they have rights. Nor do I think that they are the original owners of the video. It's kind of being shown in an educational light - maybe that you shouldn't eat a lot of calories?? Anyways, I would love to show this in one of my Health classes one day though!