Whether you are working on your challenge for Meridian Stories or pursuing a creative project of your own, you may find yourself wanting to use material you find on the Internet, material that may be protected under copyright law. The Digital Rules Resource Center is...
For all projects, citing your sources fully and properly is the most important step in the process and ethically required to avoid plagiarism. Any outside source that is used in your Meridian Stories project, including royalty free images and sound files, must be...
Google and other search engines have done many wonderful things for the Internet, not the least of which was to make it accessible to the average person by delivering the most popular websites on demand. However, as you work on your Meridian Stories challenge, you...
In general, work belongs to the creator who produced it and cannot be used by another party without proper permission and/or payment of a fee. When creating your movies, it is simplest to use only what you create. However, many publications, photographs and...
Copyright laws prevent you from using popular music that might be in your music library unless you pay what is called a ‘royalty fee’. This is a fee that is negotiated with the song’s composers and publishers for the right to use their song. However, there are a...
Written for Meridian Stories by Carrie Rogers-Whitehead, Digital Respons-Ability Introduction Social media is not just a way to communicate with friends. It is a primary source of news as well. According to the Pew Research Center, most Americans get their news from...
Introduction – This section of the Meridian Stories website details the Doctrine of Fair Use and what you need to know to make use of it in your creative projects. Start with this Essential Guide and Checklist for the Doctrine of Fair Use, which will give you a...
The Doctrine of Fair Use is a set of criteria that govern the degree to which you can use other people’s content – their pictures, video and artistic creations, for example – in your own digital creations. In the Essential Guide and Checklist, there is labeled the...
This page outlines a few myths about fair use and copyright law that are often disseminated and may affect your utilization of fair use law in a Meridian Stories challenge. If I use less than a certain amount of copyrighted video or sound (e.g., 30 seconds) or less...
One way to understand the application of successful and not-so-successful applications of fair use to the use of copyrighted material is to look at real court cases. NPR has a published an excellent article discussing The Daily Show and its use of material under fair...
