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LESSON VI – SOCIAL, LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES IN USING INTERNET

Learning Objectives
At the end of this lesson, student should be able to:
1. recognize examples of plagiarism;
2. demonstrate an understanding that almost everything available on the Internet is
protected by copyright law;
3. identify two widely-used types of documentation styles; and
4. construct proper citations of Internet and other online resources using APA or
MLA style.

Total Learning Time: Week 16 - 18 (9 hours)

Introduction
Any information or outside source (print, electronic, video, interview, etc.) used in a research
paper, essay, electronic presentation or speech, which is not your own idea or creation, must be
cited or documented, giving credit to the original source. In this way, you let your reader (in
most cases this will be your professor) know which words, phrases, images and ideas are yours
and which were taken from someone else.

Documenting your resources provides a way for your reader to retrieve the sources you used.
Your reader may be fascinated by the material and wish to read further, or he/she may question
your use of the material and wish to look at the original source. Accurate documentation of the
material will allow the reader to see if you have correctly interpreted the original source.

Additionally, when you document sources, you help to establish a reputation as a competent
researcher and writer. Your readers will see that you have used information from credible
sources.

Intellectual Property Issues

Plagiarism
Presenting another's words or ideas as your own (i.e., not documenting them) is called
plagiarism. This form of intellectual theft may range from an intentional purchase of a term
paper to the intentional or unintentional and inadvertent failure to use proper documentation in
your paper. In either case, plagiarism is a serious academic offense and can lead to serious
consequences.
Some examples of plagiarism include:
 Taking a concept or idea from a source without citing (accidental or deliberate)
 Using original text when paraphrasing
 Buying a paper from an online term paper service
 Hiring someone to write a paper
 Copying a friend's paper and handing it in as your own
 Copying and pasting a paragraph from a web page into the text of a research paper
without citing the source
Some examples that are NOT plagiarism include:
 Historical facts, i.e., dates of birth/death, locations of events and the like
 Information that can be found in numerous places, undocumented, and is known by many
people, even if you do not know it; i.e., common knowledge
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 Folk literature, which is popularly known and cannot be traced to particular writers, is
considered common knowledge. This would include nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and any
stories from the oral tradition of literature. Even if you read these things in printed form,
documentation is not needed.
 Commonsense observations
 Your own original thoughts, experiences and observations
 Quotes, paraphrases or summaries that have been properly documented

The following websites offer tips for avoiding plagiarism and discuss when to cite and how to
paraphrase sources:
 Avoiding Plagiarism (Purdue University Writing Lab)
 Examples of Plagiarism (Princeton University)
 Paraphrase: Write it in your own words (Purdue University Writing Lab)
 Paraphrasing and Quoting 101

Copyright Issues
Closely related to issues of documentation and plagiarism, but on a commercial level, is the issue
of copyright protection of intellectual property. Copyright issues in the digital era are generating
much controversy.

At its most basic level, copyright law ensures that "authors" have exclusive rights to protect their
creative efforts. The item protected must be a tangible one, i.e., a work on paper, whether it be a
book, periodical article, or poem, a piece of software, CD, recording, work of art or sculpture,
web site, web audio file, web video file, web graphic image, or any other publication. The item
must also be creative, i.e., an alphabetical list of facts would generally not be copyrighted while a
creative compilation of those same facts would be copyright protected.

The 1976 Copyright Law of the U.S. (Title 17, U.S. Code) provides basic protection for original
works of authorship. Section 106 of the Copyright Law gives the copyright owner the exclusive
right to reproduce, distribute, perform, display, or license his or her work, or to produce or
license derivative copies of his or her work.

As new technologies associated with the Internet have evolved and distance education initiatives
have expanded, copyright laws developed in 1976 have become increasingly inadequate. In
1988, the United States signed the amended Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Work, an international copyright treaty. Changes brought by the Berne Convention
included greater protection for copyright holders, copyright relations with other countries, and
the elimination of a requirement of copyright notice on a protected work. The Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 was signed into law by President Clinton on October 28,
1998. The DMCA attempts to protect owners of electronic copyright, but the nature of the
Internet and the easy way information can be duplicated and dispersed has made this a very
difficult task.

You should consider most everything published on the Internet as copyright protected.
The few categories of works not protected by copyright law include:
 Works that lack originality (compilations like the phone book)
 Materials in the public domain
 U.S. government publications
 Ideas
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 Short phrases
 Facts (unless they are presented in an original work such as a list of facts)

Fair Use
The "fair use" exemption to copyright law was created to allow for educational use of
copyrighted works without having to ask for permission from the author. Fair use allows you to
incorporate web items into your reports, speeches, electronic presentations and other academic
creations as long as you properly document the source, the item used is a short excerpt, and your
usage does not harm the commercial value of the source. It is also considered acceptable and
legal to provide a link to a website, audio file, video file or other web resource. You should not
reproduce protected material, whether it is for commercial gain or not, unless the "author"
expressly gives permission for duplication or reproduction. The site, image, file, etc. does not
have to display a copyright notice in order to be protected, nor does it have to be registered with
the U.S. Copyright Office.
The following sites will help you keep on top of the copyright issue:
 A Brief Introduction to Copyright
 Myths About Copyright Explained
 United States Copyright Office
 Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center

A Brief Intro to Copyright

The Basics
Copyright law secures for the creator of a creative effort the exclusive right to control who can
make copies, or make works derived from the original work. There are a lot of subtleties and
international variations but that's the gist of it. If you create something, and it fits the definition
of a creative work, you get to control that can make copies of it and how they make copies, with
some important exceptions.
You can also sell or license this right, or, if you do the work for somebody who hired you to do
it, they buy this right in advance.

Creative Work
The first big issue involves defining what it is to make a creative work. The law requires that it
exist in some tangible form -- it can't just be in your head or sailing through the ether, it has to be
on disk, paper, carved in stone (sculpture) or the like. It has to be creative (that's a tough one for
lawyers to define) and that means it can't just be factual data. But most things you write in
English (or C++) are going to be creative works, plus anything you photograph or sculpt or draw
or record. (What you say isn't copyrighted until it's put onto tape -- it has to be in tangible form.)
Anything you write and post to USENET is almost certainly a creative, copyrightable work.
Anything you post-process with a computer (like object code) is a derivative work, still
copyrighted.
You can also do creative editing or collecting work. So that while facts can't be copyrighted,
clever, creative organization of the facts can be. This is called a compilation copyright and it's
somewhat complex.
There are some specific exceptions in some countries. Fonts as printed on paper can't be
copyrighted for historical reasons. Nothing done by the U.S. government can be copyrighted
inside the USA.
And of course you can't copyright something somebody else did without their permission, or
derive your work from their work.

Making copies
In its simplest form making copies is making copies. Computers have added some recent
complications, like the temporary copies in packet buffers or on screens, and copies left on
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backup tape. But you can go pretty far by assuming that just about any computerized operation
on a work involves copying it.
And simply, the copyright holder gets to say if you can do this. But that's where it all gets
modified by the issues of.

Commerce
Most of copyright has to do with commerce. In fact, one major reason it's there is that most
people believe that if you let people have copyrights and make money from them, it strongly
encourages the creation and productive exploitation of creative works, which is a good thing in
most people's book. Copyright is also about control of one's creations -- particularly in most non-
U.S. countries which explicitly recognize "moral copyrights."
But still, commerce is king. So while a copyright holder can stop you from copying something,
usually they would much rather find some way to charge you for copying it. So while some
worry that copyright can give rather strong powers to the author, the truth is that the market
brings it all into balance.
It also means that to be enforced, copyrights have to have some commercial value. Nobody sane
is going to file lawsuits over things like ordinary e-mail messages and USENET postings that
have minimal commercial value, if any. You should, however, try to comply with the wishes of
authors.
You also have to watch it on USENET and the web. These are no longer tiny places. Posting
here is honest-to-goodness publication, sometimes to an audience of hundreds of thousands if not
millions. You can seriously damage the commercial value of something by giving it free to such
a large audience, all with the touch of a button.

Fair Use / Fair Dealing

There is a complex doctrine associated with copyright law which allows certain types of copying
without permission in areas where it is felt that some more important social principles would be
violated otherwise.
The "fair use" doctrine (fair dealing in Canada and some other nations) in its purest form lets a
film critic include a clip from a film in her review to illustrate a point. Since negative critics
would never get permission to do this, the fair use exemption exists to stop copyright law from
being used to stifle criticism.
This means that if you are doing things like comment on a copyrighted work, making fun of it,
teaching about it or researching it, you can make some limited use of the work without
permission. For example you can quote excerpts to show how poor the writing quality is. You
can teach a course about T.S. Eliot and quote lines from his poems to the class to do so. Some
people think fair use is a wholesale license to copy if you don't charge or if you are in education,
but it isn't. If you want to republish other stuff without permission and think you have a fair use
defense, you should read the more detailed discussions of the subject you will find through the
links above.
Fair Use has also seen some expansion in recent days, to things like time-shifting video
recordings, computer backups, space-shifting media files and more.

To Use the Net

There's a pretty simple rule when it comes to the net. If you didn't write it, and you want to
reproduce it, ask the creator, or ascertain that it meets the complex public domain rules if it's
pretty old. Most people don't really need to know much more than this. If you do, check the other
documents.

Some Legal Basics

Under the Berne copyright convention, which almost all major nations have signed, every
creative work is copyrighted the moment it is fixed in tangible form. No notice is necessary,
though it helps legal cases. No registration is necessary, though it's needed later to sue. The
copyright lasts until 70 years after the author dies. Facts and ideas can't be copyrighted, only
expressions of creative effort.
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Myths about Copyright

1) "If it doesn't have a copyright notice, it's not copyrighted."

This was true in the past, but today almost all major nations follow the Berne copyright
convention. For example, in the USA, almost everything created privately and originally
after April 1, 1989 is copyrighted and protected whether it has a notice or not. The default
you should assume for other people's works is that they are copyrighted and may not be
copied unless you know otherwise. There are some old works that lost protection without
notice, but frankly you should not risk it unless you know for sure.
It is true that a notice strengthens the protection, by warning people, and by allowing one
to get more and different damages, but it is not necessary. If it looks copyrighted, you
should assume it is. This applies to pictures, too. You may not scan pictures from
magazines and post them to the net, and if you come upon something unknown, you
shouldn't post that either.
The correct form for a notice is:
"Copyright [dates] by [author/owner]"
You can use C in a circle © instead of "Copyright" but "(C)" has never been given legal
force. The phrase "All Rights Reserved" used to be required in some nations but is now
not legally needed most places. In some countries it may help preserve some of the
"moral rights."

2) "If I don't charge for it, it's not a violation."

False. Whether you charge can affect the damages awarded in court, but that's main
difference under the law. It's still a violation if you give it away -- and there can still be
serious damages if you hurt the commercial value of the property. There is a USA
exception for personal copying of music, which is not a violation, though courts seem to
have said that doesn't include wide scale anonymous personal copying as Napster. If the
work has no commercial value, the violation is mostly technical and is unlikely to result
in legal action. Fair use determinations do sometimes depend on the involvement of
money.

3) "If it's posted to Usenet it's in the public domain."

False. Nothing modern and creative is in the public domain anymore unless the owner
explicitly puts it in the public domain (*). Explicitly, as in you have a note from the
author/owner saying, "I grant this to the public domain." Those exact words or words
very much like them.
Some argue that posting to Usenet implicitly grants permission to everybody to copy the
posting within fairly wide bounds, and others feel that Usenet is an automatic store and
forward network where all the thousands of copies made are done at the command (rather
than the consent) of the poster. This is a matter of some debate, but even if the former is
true (and in this writer's opinion we should all pray it isn't true) it simply would suggest
posters are implicitly granting permissions "for the sort of copying one might expect
when one posts to Usenet" and in no case is this a placement of material into the public
domain. It is important to remember that when it comes to the law,
computers never make copies, only human beings make copies. Computers are given
commands, not permission. Only people can be given permission. Furthermore it is very
difficult for an implicit license to supersede an explicitly stated license that the copier
was aware of.
Note that all this assumes the poster had the right to post the item in the first place. If the
poster didn't, then all the copies are pirated, and no implied license or theoretical
reduction of the copyright can take place.
(*) Copyrights can expire after a long time, putting something into the public domain,
and there are some fine points on this issue regarding older copyright law versions.
However, none of this applies to material from the modern era, such as net postings.
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Note that granting something to the public domain is a complete abandonment of all
rights. You can't make something "PD for non-commercial use." If your work is PD,
other people can even modify one byte and put their name on it.

4) "My posting was just fair use!"

The "fair use" exemption to (U.S.) copyright law was created to allow things such as
commentary, parody, news reporting, research and education about copyrighted works
without the permission of the author. That's vital so that copyright law doesn't block your
freedom to express your own works -- only the ability to appropriate other people. Intent
and damage to the commercial value of the work are important considerations. Are you
reproducing an article from the New York Times because you needed to in order to
criticize the quality of the New York Times, or because you couldn't find time to write
your own story, or didn't want your readers to have to register at the New York Times
web site? The first is probably fair use, the others probably aren't.
Fair use is generally a short excerpt and almost always attributed. (One should not use
much more of the work than is needed to make the commentary.) It should not harm the
commercial value of the work -- in the sense of people no longer needing to buy it (which
is another reason why reproduction of the entire work is a problem.) Famously, copying
just 300 words from Gerald Ford's 200,000 word memoir for a magazine article was ruled
as not fair use, in spite of it being very newsworthy, because it was the most important
300 words -- why he pardoned Nixon.
Note that most inclusion of text in follow-ups and replies is for commentary, and it
doesn't damage the commercial value of the original posting (if it has any) and as such it
is almost surely fair use. Fair use isn't an exact doctrine, though. The court decides if the
right to comment overrides the copyright on an individual basis in each case. There have
been cases that go beyond the bounds of what I say above, but in general they don't apply
to the typical net disclaim of fair use.
The "fair use" concept varies from country to country, and has different names (such as
"fair dealing" in Canada) and other limitations outside the USA.
Facts and ideas can't be copyrighted, but their expression and structure can. You can
always write the facts in your own words though.

5) "If you don't defend your copyright you lose it." -- "Somebody has that name
copyrighted!"
False. Copyright is effectively never lost these days, unless explicitly given away. You
also can't "copyright a name" or anything short likes that, such as almost all titles. You
may be thinking of trade marks, which apply to names, and can be weakened or lost if not
defended.
You generally trademark terms by using them to refer to your brand of a generic type of
product or service. Like a "Delta" airline. Delta Airlines "owns" that word applied to air
travel, even though it is also an ordinary word. Delta Hotels owns it when applied to
hotels. (This case is fairly unusual as both are travel companies. Usually the industries are
more distinct.) Neither owns the word on its own, only in context, and owning a mark
doesn't mean complete control -- see a more detailed treatise on this law for details.
You can't use somebody else's trademark in a way that would steal the value of the mark,
or in a way that might make people confuse you with the real owner of the mark, or
which might allow you to profit from the mark's good name. For example, if I were
giving advice on music videos, I would be very wary of trying to label my works with a
name like "mtv." :-) You can use marks to criticize or parody the holder, as long as it's
clear you aren't the holder.

6) "If I make up my own stories, but base them on another work, my new work belongs to
me."
False. U.S. Copyright law is quite explicit that the making of what are called "derivative
works" -- works based or derived from another copyrighted work -- is the exclusive
province of the owner of the original work. This is true even though the making of these
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new works is a highly creative process. If you write a story using settings or characters
from somebody else's work, you need that author's permission.
Yes, that means almost all "fan fiction" is arguably a copyright violation. If you want to
publish a story about Jim Kirk and Mr. Spock, you need Paramount's permission, plain
and simple. Now, as it turns out, many, but not all holders of popular copyrights turn a
blind eye to "fan fiction" or even subtly encourage it because it helps them. Make no
mistake, however, that it is entirely up to them whether to do that.
There is a major exception -- criticism and parody. The fair use provision says that if you
want to make fun of something like Star Trek, you don't need their permission to include
Mr. Spock. This is not a loophole; you can't just take a non-parody and claim it is one on
a technicality. The way "fair use" works is you get sued for copyright infringement, and
you admit you did copy, but that your copying was a fair use. A subjective judgment on,
among other things, your goals, is then made.
However, it's also worth noting that a court has never ruled on this issue, because fan
fiction cases always get settled quickly when the defendant is a fan of limited means sued
by a powerful publishing company. Some argue that completely non-commercial fan
fiction might be declared a fair use if courts get to decide.

7) "They can't get me; defendants in court have powerful rights!"

Copyright law is mostly civil law. If you violate copyright you would usually get sued,
not be charged with a crime. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a principle of criminal law,
as is "proof beyond a reasonable doubt." Sorry, but in copyright suits, these don't apply
the same way or at all. It's mostly which side and set of evidence the judge or jury accepts
or believes more, though the rules vary based on the type of infringement. In civil cases
you can even be made to testify against your own interests.

8) "Oh, so copyright violation isn't a crime or anything?"

Actually, in the 90s in the USA commercial copyright violation involving more than 10
copies and value over $2500 was made a felony. So watch out. (At least you get the
protections of criminal law.) On the other hand, don't think you're going to get people
thrown in jail for posting your E-mail. The courts have much better things to do. This is a
fairly new, untested statute. In one case an operator of a pirate BBS that didn't charge was
acquitted because he didn't charge, but congress amended the law to cover that.

9) "It doesn't hurt anybody -- in fact it's free advertising."

It's up to the owner to decide if they want the free ads or not. If they want them, they will
be sure to contact you. Don't rationalize whether it hurts the owner or not, ask them.
Usually that's not too hard to do. Time past, ClariNet published the very funny Dave
Barry column to a large and appreciative Usenet audience for a fee, but some person
didn't ask, and forwarded it to a mailing list, got caught, and the newspaper chain that
employs Dave Barry pulled the column from the net, pissing off everybody who enjoyed
it. Even if you can't think of how the author or owner gets hurt, think about the fact that
piracy on the net hurts everybody who wants a chance to use this wonderful new
technology to do more than read other people's flame wars.

10) "They e-mailed me a copy, so I can post it."

To have a copy is not to have the copyright. All the E-mail you write is copyrighted.
However, E-mail is not, unless previously agreed, secret. So you can certainly report on
what E-mail you are sent, and reveal what it says. You can even quote parts of it to
demonstrate. Frankly, somebody who sues over an ordinary message would almost surely
get no damages, because the message has no commercial value, but if you want to stay
strictly in the law, you should ask first. On the other hand, don't go nuts if somebody
posts E-mail you sent them. If it was an ordinary non-secret personal letter of minimal
commercial value with no copyright notice (like 99.9% of all E-mail), you probably won't
get any damages if you sue them. Note as well that, the law aside, keeping private
correspondence private is a courtesy one should usually honor
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General Rules of Documentation

There are a number of documentation "styles" currently in use by researchers. Many disciplines
have very specific rules concerning documentation that must be followed. Two documentation
styles used by a number of disciplines are those published by the American Psychological
Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). The APA style is used
primarily by disciplines in the social sciences, health and education fields while the MLA style is
used primarily by disciplines in the arts, humanities and literature. This lesson provides
information on proper documentation of electronic sources from both the American
Psychological Association (APA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA) and will
provide examples for the types of electronic sources commonly used by students.
Some general rules that apply to both styles include the following:
 Document any material you quote exactly.
o Follow the rules of the specific style concerning quotation marks.
o Keep long quotations to a minimum. Save these quotes for text expressed in a
unique way.
 Document any material you summarize or paraphrase.
o When you change the wording of an idea, it still remains the intellectual property
of the original author.
o Do not use quotation marks when paraphrasing.
o In most research papers, you should find that the majority of your documented
sources are ones that you have paraphrased or summarized.
 Do not document material that is common knowledge.
o If material is commonly known to be true, it does not need to be documented,
even if you found the material in an outside source.
o This includes material not known to you prior to reading about it, but generally
known to others, including historical dates and facts, most verifiable facts and
information that can be found in standard reference books, such as encyclopedias,
dictionaries and almanacs.
o If you are unsure of whether or not you should document a source, be on the safe
side and include documentation.
o You do not need to document your own ideas or thoughts.
 Follow the rules of the specific style you are using regarding in-text or parenthetical
references.
o If you cite an Internet source that does not contain pagination, leave that off of the
parenthetical or in-text reference.
o In APA style, you would include the author(s) and year of publication or in the
case of a source with no author, the first few words of the title, in quotation
marks, and the year of publication. If you use a direct quote, also include the
pagination, if available.
o In MLA style, you would include the author(s) or in the case of a source with no
author, the first few words of the title, in quotation marks. If you have accurate
pagination from a pdf file, include that.
o Examples are provided in the next modules for in-text references.
 The goal in documenting sources is to aim for comprehensiveness although for many
electronic sources, you will need to settle for citing whatever information is
available.
o Include as much information as necessary to identify the source and allow the
reader to locate it.
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o For Internet sources, the absolute minimum you should cite is the title, the date
you accessed the site and the address (URL) of the site according to the rules of
the specific style you are using (APA or MLA).
o Keep in mind that an Internet source that does not list full bibliographic
information (especially an author and date of publication).
o You will discover that professors have differing opinions about what should or
should not be included in the documentation for an electronic source. This lesson
will adhere as closely as possible to the current views of both the APA and the
MLA as expressed on their organization home pages. In all cases, check with your
professor for his or her preference.
 College libraries and large public libraries will have the following two sources that
should be consulted for information on capitalization, punctuation and the like for
both the APA and MLA styles.
o Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition
o MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition
 Both the APA and the MLA have websites that provide their official view on
documentation of electronic sources.
o APA Style
o MLA Style

REFERENCES
https://irsc.libguides.com/c.php?g=146743&p=961932
https://www.templetons.com/brad/copyright.html
https://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html
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Name______________________ Course & Year_______________Date___________

EVALUATION:
Define /explain the following:
1. PLAGIARISM
2. COPYRIGHT
3. American Psychological Association (APA)
4. What are the examples of plagiarism,
5. “almost everything available on the Internet is protected by copyright law”, please
explain
6. identify two widely-used types of documentation styles
7. construct or give examples of proper citations of Internet and other online
resources using APA or MLA style.