Week 9- Fair Use

     I believe that most of us in class were very surprised with the outcome of there "Fair Use Copy Right" quiz.  Fair Use is the existing of a copyright law that provides for the fair use of copyright materials, especially for educational and researched based uses (Thompson, 2005).  With myself included I could not believe how many of those copyright rules were being broken even in my own high school.  I remember numerous occasions when teachers would bring in "20/20" or "Dateline" episodes for the class to watch.  In my senior year of High school my teacher videotaped the "Band of Brothers" series from HBO for the class to watch.  Was that considered breaking the copyright laws?  In many ways the times we are living in are very scary.  I take the music copyright laws very seriously.  When I am playing in a band and or writing original music there is always a sense or pressure to copyright my material.  Every time I completed a original song and copyright it I would have to fill out a booklet of forms and send a $55 check to Washington D.C.  The process to receive the official form back from the government takes approximately 10-12 months.  The whole procedure was a very long and tedious process.