This week, I’ve learned a lot about copyright and why specific copyrighted materials can be used in the classroom. One of my hobbies is writing and reading webnovels, so I was already fairly familiar with the term ‘fair use’ and how it comes into play when working with materials posted online. The most surprising thing to learn (or perhaps ‘most unexpected’) was that copyright is assumed to exist automatically once something is ‘fixed’ in a semi-permanent medium. It might not offer much protection without the registration, but theft and plagiarism is considered a big deal in online writing communities, so it’s surprising to learn that these authors might have more protections than they realize.

Then again, I’m left with the question–Does that copyright belong to the creator of the work, or the creator of the site it is hosted on? I believe most sites created in order to host writing or art route the ownership of all posted works back to the site. So is it giving up your ownership of your own work in order to post your writing anywhere online? This is not only an issue for hobbyist writers to grapple with, but educators as well. If a class requires a blog post from its students, for example, are they being opened up to plagiarism?

(Not to come off as hostile, of course! This assignment only made me think of my own students’ rights.)