Late Blog

I know this is really late, but I am a firm believer in better late than never.  The week that I forgot to post this blog for was a very informative one.  We further explored copyrights, trademarks, plagiarism, and research ethics.  It made me come to the realization that many people break copyright without even knowing it.  A copyright is the basically something that shows a person’s legal ownership of something.  A copyright lasts that said person’s life time plus 75 years, which will benefit that person’s children and grandchildren.  A trademark is the same as a copyright, but instead of referring to a text a trademark protects an image.  If someone wants to use an image or something that has a copyright you have to get permission from the owner.  Or to make it easier you can use a website called creative commons which has all different types of materials that have been approved by the owners to be used.  Another thing that might be very tempting to not pay much attention to is research ethic.  When you find a source that agrees with you like 90 percent, but then disagree with you 10 percent.  It would be very easy to just edit that disagreeing part out, but ethically it would be wrong.  So the next time you have something that you want to edit, either leave it unedited, or just find a new source.  Another thing most people don’t know is that if it is common knowledge than you don’t need to cite it.  This lesson was important to me because I vaguely knew about copyright and trademarks, but this lesson clear a few things up for me.