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Ideas, inventions, creative works and trademarks are often treated as private property. By giving a person (or business) ownership of a creative work through copyright, the courts help guarantee the owner(s) any financial profits derived from their creative endeavor.

Copyrights were originally intended to insure that artists and their heirs would receive all profits from the work. Copyright protection was not designed to last forever, although major corporations (including Disney) are constantly fighting to extend copyright law.

Often, students in web design classes want to scan images from books or magazines for use in their assignments; or collect images and text from sites across the Internet. This usually isn't acceptable since the copyrights for these images are owned by the publishers, photographers, and artists.

Students frequently argue that using the image isn't hurting anyone, and that students aren't making money off their websites. Sadly the student's motive and financial status have little to do with copyright law as copyright owners have the right to restrict how and where their images are used. If the copyright owner has not specifically said the image may be freely used on the web, then students may not use the material without written permission.

Some incredibly savvy students have commented that since student websites are for educational use in a formal class that their use of copyrighted works would be permitted under a portion of copyright law known as "fair use." While this might be factually true, educational fair use is generally not permitted in this class. We are educating students to be web professionals, and hold all students to professional standards. "Educational fair use" is not permitted in the professional world, so it is not permitted in our classes.

There are a few exceptions -- works which have a lapsed copyright are part of the public domain. These works are not protected by copyright law, and may be freely scanned, altered, and used. As a general rule of thumb, a work 75 years old or older is not protected by copyright law. Sometimes individuals or corporations will place their creative works in the public domain so anyone can use them.

What materials may students use in projects?

This varies from project to project. It is very important to read the guidelines for each project.

Generally speaking, students may use any of the following:

• Items in the public domain, including items from online clipart collections which are part of the public domain
• Items from clip art collections on CD or disk owned by the student
• Items from online digital collections which the student has purchased the right to use (Corbis, Eyewire, etc.)
• "Comp" (or comprehensive) images from clip art collections allowing comp use.
• Items for which the student can provide a signed copyright release
• Items the student has created*

What materials are prohibited?

• Trademarked images (McDonald's "golden arches", the Harry Potter logo, etc.)
• Scans of money, social security cards, driver's licenses, etc. The U.S. government frowns on scanning these documents. It isn't illegal, but it can lead to all sorts of problems.
• Photographs taken by strangers, friends, and family -- unless the student can provide a release form. Please remember owning a copy of an image is not the same as owning the copyright!

*Unless the student has sold or given away the rights to the work in question.