After reading the articles and watching the videos, the same thing came to mind for all of them alike- infringement on copyright is obviously not taken as seriously as it should be from professors, students, scholars, or anyone else who uses work that is not their own. This however, seems to be mainly due to the fact that there is not a specific list as to what is fair use and what is not. In Dan Cohen’s Owning the Past: Fair Use quotes that in section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act is is stated that “fair use of a copyrighted work … for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright”. Many people can and do take advantage of this and can say they are doing research, reporting, or criticizing when in reality, they are stealing someone else’s work and calling it their own and majority of people are able to get away with it since there is so many different rules and regulations regarding fair use.

Fair use strikes me as something that is almost assumed to be everything on the internet for students. I, for example, have never asked permission to use any type of source (digital, oral, written) because I was never required to do that as we are required to cite our sources in a bibliography. However, I found it interesting that some books have to be approved to even be in a bibliography. It was interesting though that just as one should be careful with fair use, it was also stated that one should not be too cautious and some, Chicago Manual for example, warns against seeking permission.

After reading this article, I feel like I’m more inclined to make absolute sure that what I am producing is fair use and could not get me sued in anyway!