Sometimes, having the law on your side is not enough. You also may need to be proactive toward possible adversaries.
For example, let’s say you plan a yearbook feature about leisure activities, and you want to include an action photo of a student who is hunting. He’s pointing a gun, and you know that your principal may take issue with the coverage – a student using a weapon in the school yearbook.
In journalism class and on the yearbook staff, cover ethics first.
While understanding law – copyright, libel, invasion of privacy, obscenity, business issues, students’ rights – is important, good ethics help curb abuse of rules and the law and guide staff behavior toward noble goals. Ethics are the key in balancing student rights with responsibilities and respect.
What do you mean Bubba won’t be in the football team picture?” screamed the angry father. “He was the team. Without him there would have been no postseason play. No championship. No Coach of the Year. No, no…”
Copyright gives its owner five exclusive rights over the work.
As anyone who has ever struggled to drive within the speed limit can tell you, the law can be both a friend and a foe. It sets parameters for acceptable behavior that can help make the world run more fairly, smoothly and safely. But it can also limit our freedom, forcing us to follow someone else’s rules or pay a price for ignoring them.
These are generally ineligible for copyright because they lack the necessary originality and creativity to distinguish them from the ideas they represent. For example, the words in the well-known airline slogan, “Some people just know how to fly” cannot be copyrighted and, therefore, could be used as a headline or caption in coverage of the school track team.
First, the work must be original. This means that the author must have shown at least a small spark of creativity when he made the work. For example, your school’s cheerleading squad could not claim the copyright to a cheer that has been used by other schools, even if they changed words to reflect your team and school name. Second, the work must be “fixed in any tangible medium of expression.” This “fixation” requirement means that only works preserved in a tangible form (a book, a newspaper, a video, a CD-ROM disk, etc.) – as opposed to those existing entirely in an artist’s mind – will receive copyright protection.