What a real source of pain this can be to anyone who uses the Internet, especially if they plan to use an item in a presentation. Lord knows I am guilty during one of my classes learning how to use and make an imovie I chose to make a piece on the pledge of allegiance. Having grown up in Indiana. Red Skelton was a huge inspiration to me. Not only in his comedy but also in his very stoic portrayal about the pledge of allegiance when he was in grade school.

Now his voice has been recorded for all of posterity to listen to  and yes I used his message in my imovie presentation along with dozens of images from all over the web. Was this illegal? Most assuradely I probably broke copyright laws unknown to me or because I just chose to ignore them. The presentation turned out to be awesome and something i hava used in class for numerous presentations to my incoming freshman/first year cadets. Unbeknown to them they were viewing an illegal program and yet here they were learning about our country, there heritage and what it meant to good old Red about our and his flag.

This is silly, I was not making any money off of any of the “STOLEN” property however should any of the photographers or the relatives of Mr. Skelton they have every right to make me remove my program and destroy it.

Is there an easy answer to this? Not that I see, our old concepts of a piece of art that is physical and can be touched does not apply to our date bits information highway. Making a hand painted copy of the Mona Lisa and then advertising it as the original may get you many laughs from the sophisticated art connoisseur,  however the trying to pass this off as an original work of art would get you thrown in jail. In this case though you were committing fraud and trying to make a buck. Is this the same though for someone who writes a story about the Mona Lisa and uses a web obtained picture, sells advertising space on there web site and is making a buck from there story, but is also using a forged copy of the picture, even though they are not trying to sell a forged copy of the picture. I am sure the legal system would frown upon there use of the photo, but did they intend to sell the copy?

My poor feeble mind and gray matter hurts just thinking about this. New rules and boundaries definetly have to be applied to  the information highway and this huge new tool to access mass amounts of information and data.

As for me, I will continue to use all and any available information to teach my cadets and hopefully do not turn myself into a felon in the process.