Is your classroom home to budding artists, designers, musicians, or writers?

We’ve gathered some interesting copyright facts you can use to get students
thinking about their creative rights, while also encouraging critical thinking
skills!

Most of us are probably aware of copyright from a young age, but it can still
be a really tricky subject to get to grips with. There are lots of exceptions
and different situations that can change who owns the rights to a work.

If your students are interested in creating content, it’s important for them to
know their rights. However, the nuance and debate of copyright also makes
it a good topic for teaching critical thinking and analytical skills. The seven
interesting facts below will give your students a good starting point into the
world of copyright, and hopefully leave some room to spark up a little
classroom debate!

1. You don’t need to declare copyright or include a copyright notice to be

protected

You’re probably familiar with the copyright © symbol (it’s even in CLA’s
logo!), but you don’t actually need it to make sure your work is covered by
copyright. Actually, you don’t need to include any copyright notice at all—
when you commit your idea to paper (or any other fixed form) your work is
automatically protected! However, it might still be a good idea to include a
copyright notice so nobody can claim they didn’t realise the work was
protected.