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You already have a copyright just by writing it. Courts have ruled this is fair use, which means the courts feel this use of content is more valuable to society
by SoftwareMaven 15y ago
You already have a copyright just by writing it. Courts have ruled this is fair use, which means the courts feel this use of content is more valuable to society than writers keeping their rights.
I wonder if laws would change if we were talking about combatting plagiarism in film schools by keeping a database of all films to match against.
- nostrademons 15y agoIf it's fair use, the student keeps copyright, they just can't go after Turnitin etc. for copyright infringement. Lack of infringement != losing copyright. If the professor were to, say, publish an anthology of student papers, this would not be fair use and he'd have to either get permission or risk being sued by the students. There're various other cases of fair use that make this fairly obvious, eg. when you DVR a TV show, that's fair use, but it doesn't mean that the MPAA has lost copyright over that show and can no longer go after people who share it on Bittorrent.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoYeah, my comment was unclear. I didn't mean to imply the students lost their rights, just that the courts have decided this particular use supersedes their rights under the fair use doctrine.