"Fair use" refers to the limitations and in reproducing or photocopying copyrighted materials for acceptable purposes "such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research," according to www.copyright.gov.
As a student, you need to be familiar with Fair Use, defined in Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S. Code). According to the law, fair use is determined by four factors:
-- From www.copyright.gov
Examples of fair use include:
- Quotations of exerpts taken from a newspaper editorial for an argumentative research paper.
- Quotations of excerpts of a scholarly journal article for a research paper to provide factual information or illustrate a point of view.
- Photocopying a legislative or judicial proceedings document for personal or scholarly use.
Read: The Fair Use rule: When use of copyrighted material is acceptable
Did you know that social media websites provide copyright statements and usage agreements? You may be tempted to gloss through these fine-print policies and agreements and totally ignore them but a number of such sites ask you to agree to grant them a license to use your content, such as your profile information, photographs, or other personal statements. Below are links to copyright agreements and usage statements for a few popular social media sites.
According to http://opensource.org/, "open source is a development method for software" that allows creators to share and review their work with free distribution rights. The open source initiative arose through an effort to create superior and more reliable software while lowering development costs and the dependency of vendors. But, even though this kind software is free for community use, open source is a kind of license, similar to public domain, that allows users to modify or create derivative works that can also be distributed freely. More specific license information can be found here.
Creative Commons is one such kind of license.