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ESL forum >
Concerning worksheets > Copyright law for copyright holders only??
Copyright law for copyright holders only??
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Vickiii
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Copyright law for copyright holders only??
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Hi People,
I have been reading through the forum and it seems people are under the impression that if you create something then you instantly have a copyright for it.
I hate to share this with you - but
If you want your worksheets copyrighted - then you have to go and get a copyright for them. It is not instant.
If you share your work on this site without a copyright from the country the person is from - then you have no copyright rights.
We are here to share and basically once you post it here - people can do whatever they like with it apparently even upload it as free printable on another website - and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it in a legal sense that is.
What do you think? Am I completely barking up the wrong tree?
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28 Jun 2009
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QueenJade
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I agree with you Vickii!
Sometime ago some members from here started publishing all the websites (bolgs) where they had found their worksheets... and claiming people had stolen them. I didn �t think they had the right to accuse people in such a way.
There was a blog where a teacher uploaded material for her students, (the material were some worksheets from here from teh most popular members) she wasn �t selling this material online or anything, she was, apparently, only using it with her students and with so many �accusation � this person deleted her blog.
So it �s a very delicate issue in this site.
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28 Jun 2009
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Bruna Dutra
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Hi Vicki and Jade, I guess your question (kinda)similar to mine. But I wasn �t talking about copyrights to the WS itself (creation, layout, writing, etc.) only regarding the IMAGES on them.
As I posted on the other post, I �m not allowed to use copyrighted images in the WSs I use in the school I work, they must be Royalty free. Since I �m not willing to pay to have images in my WS (I work with adults, they do not care for or need pics like children do - I gotta admit they do brighten up printables, though), I was wondering if the images many members use are royalty free, from internet (Google images) or from a Clipart website (payed Royalties), and how can I know that?
Regarding the WSs themselves, I totally agree with you. I do not intend to have copyrights on my stuff, but how can you not be upset when someone else calls your work their own? We say in my country that what can �t be solved, solved it is. There isn �t much we can do about it.
But, what �s your opinion about the members � image rights claim?
And on a personal question: Where can we find these type of images:
http://www.eslprintables.com/printable.asp?id=89323#thetop
They �re not clipart, what websites have them for sale or for free download and use?
For those who read/answer, Thanks guys!
Bruna
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28 Jun 2009
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moravc
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Let �s agree on this:
WE SHOULD BE POLITE. WE MUST BEHAVE NICELY. We should respect work of others...
I think it is good to use common sense while reporting. That �s the easiest way...
If someone borrows colourful 6 x 10 table, it is not very polite, but it cannot be called stealing. If someone "takes" 80% of somebody else �s work I WOULD CALL IT STEALING.
It doesn �t matter if the work is registered, copyrighted at any organisation or what.
We should state the source of our work... If somebody uploads a wss and a month later somebody else uploads wss where the content is 80%-90% same, I would strongly suggest to GIVE CREDITS at least...
Please, most of people here neither blind, nor stupid or forgetful. We can recognise if we used very similar wss with our students before...
I don �t report any wss, but sometimes I feel sorry for those whose work is turned upside down and uploaded as a very first original work...
As soon as a work is "fixed", that is,
written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is
automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any
derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them,
or until the copyright expires.
well as far as I can remember it was said here:
any work written gains sort of copyright !!!
no-one is allowed to steal any article, reading, exercise, boardgame, set of pictures WITHOUT at least mentioning the source (asking for permission is much better)
All worksheets here are for personal / classroom use only
NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO SELL / REDISTRIBUTE / alter - change wss and upload them to his/her blog / web...
no-one is allowed to PUBLISH work from eslprintables BECAUSE OF RULES OF THIS SITE - see Victor �s rules ! http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=9048
= VICTOR SAYS:"The terms of use of this website say clearly that...
The printables included in this website can be downloaded for personal use only. You are not allowed to use them for commercial purposes, nor to publish them by any means.
Furthermore, according to the Berne convention:
As soon as a work is "fixed", that is,
written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is
automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any
derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them,
or until the copyright expires.
This means that you are the copyright owner of your worksheets
from the very moment you make them, even if you don �t register them. "
The other question is: if someone steals your work, will you get money in court? The answer is: probably not...
But we have our own court - our moderators are the jury... If someone steals, he would be punished...
If you use eslprintables member �s wss, boardgame, complete layout, big set of pictures and you upload the work here at eslprintables, you should at least mention your source and give link to the original.
And if you want to show your good manners: ask first, get permission and then upload
good example is here:
http://www.eslprintables.com/printable.asp?id=253310#thetop
please read this:
http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=5141
http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=9338
alien boy says:
"According to the Berne Convention, it is
possible to assert a copyright on any original (but not necessarily
unique) work as soon as it is in a �fixed � form. Essentially the form
of the idea can be copyrighted but not the idea.
Copyright law is their to protect
financial interests of the owner of an original form of work... so if
your �original work � is not used to generate an income & the
person who copied you work has also not generated income from their
copy, then you are unlikely to receive any compensation or reparation
in monetary terms for their breach of your copyright. Essentially the
best you canhope for (if you actually took it to court) would be the
removal of the copy fromthis site & a warning issued to the
offender... & that �s if a judgement can actually be applied!
The �Fair Use � principle is a
defense if someone is sued for breach of copyright. I put a reasonable
comment about it in this discussion:
To finally get to the point...
A member �s work can be considered
copyrighted at the moment of its creation, so the moderator who left
that comment is definitely (but not necessarily always) wrong in most
cases. If someone derives a worksheet from someone else �s worksheet
then they may also be breaching copyright as a derivative work is
actually considered to come under the copyright of the original work
(to generalise a little). The next question is whether the worksheet
based on another �s is �derivative � in a legal sense as distinct from
a literal sense.
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28 Jun 2009
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moravc
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Dear friends,
to conclude ABOUT "BORROWING" worksheet from OTHER MEMBERS:
I suppose most of the hard-working teachers here do not want to upset anybody.
So please, if you get inspired, use part of worksheet from eslprintables to make a new worksheet, please please at least give link to the original wss.
YOU cannot know how long did it take the author to make the worksheet / table / board / collect the pictures... Maybe s/he worked for more than one hour to complete the original worksheet...
It is nice if you are inspired. It can flatter the hard-working author. Praise him by mentioning his name / link... He may feel proud of himself if you do so...
He must feel betrayed, angry, sad if you take his work and don �t mention him at all.
Try to think how would YOU feel if somebody took YOUR 2-hour-work and call it an original -unique - very own worksheet...
There are many unskilled users of MS Word who cannot make their own layouts, tables, boards. It is ok. Not all of us are IT experts. But if you "borrow" somebody else´s template, be so kind and say thanks at least...
Please use common sense and think before you act.
Thank you, dearest friends!
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28 Jun 2009
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Bruna Dutra
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Wow, moravc. I almost couldn �t follow you! But probably because I haven �t been around for a long time.
I think that what the others meant was that LEGALLY you don �t have rights over something till you REGISTER it, or prove it �s your original work after someone else has REGISTERED it. Which I don �t think is the case for us, and like you said, the site �s "court" works just fine for our purpose of RESPECT and HONESTY.
Yet again, maybe I am a little bit pain in the ***, but what do you guys have to say about the IMAGES? I can �t imagine everyone here draws their own pics, therefore has rights over them.
Sorry for pushing it. I �d just really like to get more free images for my WS.
Thanks.
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28 Jun 2009
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anatavner
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I agree with Vickiii and I to disagree with moravc , anyway with most of the things moravc mentioned because this site is for teachers to share their work.
Teacher post here lots of WS and those I like I download onto my computer to use whenever I need it. I don �t keep track of who wrote the WS. When I need the WS I read it and I sometimes make changes because not everything is suitable to my classes at that moment in time (I also change my personal WS I do to one class that are not suitable to other classes).
moravc also wrote "All worksheets here are for personal / classroom use only
NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO SELL / REDISTRIBUTE / alter - change wss and upload them to his/her blog / web..." - I have a problem in my school. We have a certain butget for printable WS and many times we have to ask the students to go into our school site or our personal site and download pages because school refuses to duplicate pages for us. So I don �t see the difference - because I don �t sell these WS - I ask MY STUDENTS to download pages in order to practice whatever I teach them. therefore when I read " The
printables included in this website can be downloaded for personal use
only. You are not allowed to use them for commercial purposes, nor to
publish them by any means." I think that giving the pages to my students by mail/ site / duplicate is the same.
If teachers want copyright they should not publish on the net or on this site. WE are all teachers and we publish our work so others can enjoy and use it.
I feel proud when teachers download my WS and give it to their students or use their personal sites and ask students to download the pages. I do this because I want SHARE my work. I think many feel the same.
Don �t forget that we are all teachers who share work, to be a member and be able to download pages means you have to upload material as well. No one who JUST FEELS LIKE IT can coe and take our work. We all work together and share whatever we do. (Remember the other day someone complained that he needed material but he couldn �t download WS because he has no points and we all explained that he has to "pay" by contributing?????)
I feel that to star with the Berne rules is too much for us. All we want is to enrich our students and ourselves. I have learned a lot since I joined this site and my students have gained beautiful WS done by members on this site and also as a result by me as well.
So, I feel that as long as we don �t gain any money from using this wonderful WSs than it is OK to use the one our blogs/ personal site / school sites and of course to duplicate for our students.
Anat
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28 Jun 2009
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moravc
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Dear brunadutra,
if you need to have free pictures / non-copyrighted materials in worksheets you use at your school, you should be aware of this fact:
most of contributors here are neither writers nor artists. Most of them upload worksheets consisting of "borrowed" text / picture AND their own exercises...
Some contributors even don �t remember the source of the text and they don �t know that the text is copyrighted. Maybe they copied the text from internet...
So I would strongly recommend to read the wss before you bring it to your school...
and maybe delete some / all unecessary pictures...
Free pictures can be googled.
http://www.google.cz/search?hl=cs&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Acs%3Aofficial&hs=Np7&q=%22royalty+free+pictures%22&btnG=Hledat&lr=
But I cannot say if it is a good idea.
Virtually everything from internet may be copyrighted... (taken from copyrighted materials)
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28 Jun 2009
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moravc
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I cannot agree with anatavner, sorry...
this site is Victor �s and we have to pay attention to his rules...
http://www.eslprintables.com/forum/topic.asp?id=9048
= VICTOR SAYS:"The terms of use of this website say clearly that...
The printables included in this
website can be downloaded for personal use only. You are not allowed to
use them for commercial purposes, nor to publish them by any means.
If your students need the worksheets and you cannot print them, THEN SEND THOSE WORKSHEETS STRAIGHT TO THEIR MAIL BOXES.
Or upload the worksheets with PASSWORD to some RESTRICTED ACCESS site...
You can send those worksheet to their "memory stick", mobile phone, mp3 player ... whatever...
There are some ways how to solve your problem, but you must be willing to think about it...
But you really don �t have right to redistribute worksheets from eslprintables to ALL PEOPLE who visit your blog / school web...
This is Victor �s site and he protects the rights of this site...
We should use common sense...
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28 Jun 2009
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moravc
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about using the worksheets and changing them according to your needs:
most wss here are EDITABLE, you CAN edit them, change, remove pics etc... and give the edited version to your students for free...
But YOU MUSTN �T UPLOAD THE EDITED version HERE at eslprintables and CALL IT "MY ORIGINAL WORK without STATING THE SOURCE"
you can easily find the AUTHOR by SEARCH BAR ! And you can ask him/her for permission. When s/he agrees, then you can upload...
I hope all of us CAN agree on that !
Please share your opinion...
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28 Jun 2009
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QueenJade
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I also agree with you Anatavner and you said:
I have a problem in my school. We have a
certain butget for printable WS and many times we have to ask the
students to go into our school site or our personal site and download
pages because school refuses to duplicate pages for us. So I don �t see
the difference - because I don �t sell these WS - I ask MY STUDENTS to
download pages in order to practice whatever I teach them. therefore
when I read " The
printables included in this website can be downloaded for personal use
only. You are not allowed to use them for commercial purposes, nor to
publish them by any means." I think that giving the pages to my students by mail/ site / duplicate is the same.
Something similar happens to me at school. Sometimes, students don �t have the money to go to the photocopy shop, or they forget they had to take some copies so it �s easier for them to print at home, to be able to download the material from internet.
I have a blog (and so does the school) but I never upload material from here (only my own) because I wouldn �t like some members accusing me of stealing their work like it happened sometime ago with two teachers from Spain who deleted their account because they were bombarded with messages saying they were THIEVES. (And those blogs weren �t selling the material)...but it was a huge bomb here.
I feel, this is not correct, first because blogs are also used to share material and in many cases, with students because it �s easier to tell them to download homework etc,. from a web page than having to send them all a private message with a printable.
However, rules are rules too and according to them here, we can �t upload material from here to blogs! so you can �t share with sts wss this way. Only by printing them and taken them in paper to class.
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28 Jun 2009
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