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.
Writing copy – good copy – can be the most burdensome part of producing a yearbook. It often involves laboring for hours over a single caption; tearing through the thesaurus to find the perfect word; struggling to gather effective quotes; never settling for “good enough” if there is something better. Mentally exhausting? Yes! And yet, the essence of excellent yearbook writing can be summed up in one simple word: detail.
The last deadline has been met and the staff and adviser breathe a big sigh of relief. Some members of the yearbook staff may think the yearbook lab class just became an extra study hall and now there will be time to catch up on other classes. But, there are almost two months of the school year left.