Henry's Story - Making Mashups -CCC

Key Terms

• piracy: noun - stealing copyrighted work by downloading or copying it in order to keep, sell, or give it away without permission and without paying
• plagiarism: noun - copying, “lifting,” or making slight changes to some or all of someone else’s work and saying you wrote it
• acknowledge: verb -  giving credit to someone’s work you use by clearly stating their name, title of the work, year it was made, and a hyperlink

Once someone records an original idea, it is copyrighted. Copyright is an important law that helps protect the rights of creators so they receive credit and get paid for their work. Most things you find, download, copy and paste from the Internet are copyrighted. It’s great to be able to use things we find online, but we have to do it responsibly. We have to show our respect for other people’s hard work and creativity by giving credit where credit is due. 

Some people may not realize that copying and pasting material they find online and into schoolwork is plagiarism. They may not understand that illegal downloading and sharing of music and movies is piracy, which is stealing. Everyone needs to understand how to use copyrighted work online, make sure they get permission before using it, and properly cite the work they us. Sometimes, this can be confusing, since under fair use, people may use a certain percentage of some works, but generally not for commercial purposes.

Watch: "Henry's Story - Making Mashups." Is creating new online audio with existing music legal? A young boy discusses borrowing online content to make his own music mash-ups and video sequences.