This week I read two blog postings about people who used material protected by copyright. In the first case a lovely, delightful and certainly kind cease-and-desist letter was written to Patrick Weinsink’s publisher who infringed upon the rights of Jack Daniels. In the second, author Roni Loren was sued and taken to court, even though she took down the offending photograph she had put on her blog within minutes of receiving the notice to do so, and she found it to be an expensive and time consuming lesson, all for a photo she really didn’t need.

With this in mind use your telephone or camera to snap an appropriate picture if you need one or use a creative commons resource. If you blog, or plan to have your students blog, be sure to familiarize yourself with copyright issues before using a photo found on the Internet.  When in doubt, leave it out.

Here is a link to a PearlTrees I created some time ago with some copyright articles which might be of interest to those of you in K12. (Click on the X to close the iPhone app notification or wait about 10 seconds.)