H. Victoria Bryant,

It was an honor to have Ms. Bryant be our guest speaker this week in class. She is the Assistant Director at the Research Products Center at the University of Wyoming. I had no idea there was such an important building on the campus that can assist students with copyright laws and trademarks. Individuals working in the building will even assist you if you have an idea for an app, for example and would like to apply for a patent for your app. The options for the Research Products Center to help students is endless.

The presentation began with an informative slide show and Ms. Bryant was knowledgeable regarding the laws and facts of copyrights. Copyrights are her main focus, so we did not discuss trademarks in detail. There were some questions that were asked by my classmates that she did not know the answer to, but she said she would find the answers out for us. I do not see a problem with not knowing all the answers because really...Who knows all the answers to everything? All and all the presentation was packed full of details and was interesting to know the penalty for breaking copyright laws. I had no idea the penalties were so high.

Additionally, I appreciate the fact of learning that to view a movie in your classroom there are strict copyright laws for the viewing. For example, if you rent a movie from Netflix it is understood that you and a copy of friends might be viewing the movie together as a small group. However, if you are showing the movie to a large group or a class at school, then you will have to rent the rights for the extra audience members. At most libraries, you can pay extra to rent the movie for a larger group to watch the movie. This example can fall in one of the copyright laws. I found this fact very interesting and so grateful to know about since I have never thought about it before.

It was great to have a guest speaker in our class and I feel I learned so much regarding the topic. I look forward to the next guest speaker in the future.