Copyright course

You know, I think I understand quite a bit about US copyright law. Still I decided to take a four-week online course, Copyright for Educators and Librarians, run by Duke University. The instructors are Kevin Smith, M.L.S., J.D., Lisa A. Macklin, J.D.,M.L.S., and Anne Gilliland, JD, MLS.

It has a hefty syllabus to read each week, plus a half dozen video lectures. The latter are rather interesting, but the former, much of it right out of the copyright law itself, is dry and occasionally self-contradictory. Work for hire, public domain, fair use – all complicated issues, and those were the ones I KNEW about. The rules regarding the term of copyright in the United States, based on various changes in the law, are mind-bending.

The week runs Monday to Monday. There’s an online class participation each week, and a 10-question test for the first three weeks, with a paper for the fourth.

Did OK the first week. But this coming period is complicated by a book review I’m doing on Tuesday, a wedding and another party I’m attending later in the week, plus a probable lengthy visit to the ortho guy, and quite possibly a vacation, though that is still in flux, after the expense of the recent car trouble. The bride in the wedding is named after me, no lie.

So I need to be terse here. I may not be commenting on your blogs or your Facebook pages; the former I’ll eventually get to; the latter, probably not, especially those FB quizzes. I may be slow approving your comments – but please make them anyway, especially re: yesterday’s post, because it’ll make The Daughter happy! – off and on, for the next three weeks, the duration of the course. It will not affect my blogging, in that I’ve now written a post for every day through August 14, seriously, and August 15 is started; but I’ll be slow to write on current events, significant deaths, and the like.

Know, however, my schadenfreude over the Happy Birthday song lawsuit is very great.