As I read many blogs this past weekend, I found out that Scrappin Doodles is being sued for selling Dr. Suess clip art. It is such a shame, but anything that is copyrighted can not be re-created in another version. Example, it would be illegal for me to draw my own versions of the Hulk, Spiderman, Spongebob, or any other character owned by anyone and make it my own, sell it, and use their name. It is not legal to sell something that is not rightfully yours. It's also against copyright to use pictures out of books to make your own clipart and resell them as your own. I think with Pinterest, and all of the edublogs out there, more people are aware of copyright infringement being made, including the corporation or company that owns Dr. Suess. More will surely follow. I view hundreds of flipchart lessons on Promethean Planet and the Smart Exchange and see hundreds of lessons that violate copyright laws. You can't create a lesson with Spongebob and post it to a forum WITHOUT prior or approved permission from Nickelodeon, but still it's done everyday. I see Dora, and Twilight voting pages - all without permission to use. If you use clipart from someone and have their permission or have a license to use it, that's a different story. Most likely those places require you to place a link on things you sell, so make sure you do so. In Scrappin Doodles case, they were the ones that made the clip art and sold it; therefore, they are the ones that are being sued. The same goes for Google Images. Many of the pictures on Google images are not free to use without permission from the person who took the picture. Here are a list of sites that deal with copyright and also sites that have copyright free images to use in your lessons. Hopefully it will help shed some light and help teachers to be more cautious so they don't find themselves in trouble for posting or selling something they shouldn't have. Also, if you see something that you think infringes on copyright, email the person that posted it to let them know so they can take it down. As teachers we all need to communicate with each other, help each other, and work together to make sure what we do is right. There are exceptions when things can be used in a teacher's classroom for educational purposes; however, educational purpose doesn't cover anything that is going to be sold. You can't make money off of someone else's name nor characters they have created.
Check out this wikispaces on copyright from a copyright conference that I attended recently.
http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/
If you want free photographs this site is a good one as well:
http://www.freerangestock.com
