---
title: Intellectual Property
units: [Digital Information]
summary: You own the digital information you create.
weight: 110
---

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## Today's Objectives
- Argue if current copyright laws are helping or harming society using evidence.
- Explain how copyright and Creative Commons licenses can be applied to digital creative works.

## Lesson Overview
### How would you feel if someone took an image you posted online for your friends to see, put it on a T-shirt, and sold it for $10 a piece??!!
{{< collapse summary="Click here to reveal the answer." >}}

You would feel terrible!! Or... you wouldn't care.

Nonetheless, when you create materials on the computer, you own them; they are your "Intellectual Property".

{{% define "Intellectual Property" %}}

Using materials created by someone else and trying to pass them off as your own is plagiarism when you don't have the creator's permission. There may even be legal consequences for using these materials!

{{</ collapse >}}

### What if I want others to be able to freely use my copyrighted materials?
{{< collapse summary="Click here to reveal the answer." >}}

You can license it under a Creative Commons license. Check out the Creative Commons notice at the bottom of this page!

{{% define "Creative Commons" %}}

There are a few other licenses that you may have heard about that also allow access:

- Open Source: programs that are made freely available and may be redistributed and modified.
- Open Access: online research output free of restrictions to access and use

{{</ collapse >}}

## Assignment
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{{% unit-journal-define-terms "Intellectual Property" "Creative Commons" %}}

### Digital Copyright
Do your own research and find an article about digital copyright.

The article should:

- Discuss the complexities of owning and sharing digital information
- Explore who benefits or is harmed by policies around copyright

Here are some topics you can search if you need ideas:

- Fornite sued for stealing dance moves
- How Dude Perfect created a content-driven brand
- Taylor Swift removed music from Spotify
- Wu-Tang Clan created one copy of an album

Record:
- The article title
- The article URL
- Your answers to the following questions based on the article:
    - What was digitized?
    - What was the goal or purpose of digitizing this thing?
    - Is someone benefiting from this situation? If so, who?
    - Is someone being harmed in this situation? If so, who?
    - Are these impacts intended or unintended? How do you know?

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## Upcoming Quiz
Look over your Unit Journal and play [this Kahoot](https://create.kahoot.it/share/quiz-digital-information/068f30e3-1940-4fd3-878f-bdc01feb74a9) to prepare for your upcoming quiz.