Acoustics Animations
Dr. Dan Russell
Graduate Program in Acoustics, Penn State
Copyright Questions and Fair Use of My Animations
All of my webpages have a copyright statement at the top of the page, and most of my newer animations have a copyright imbedded into the animation itself. I have done so to protect my intellectual property rights. Some of the animations took me a long time to figure out how to make them, and I wish to protect my authorship. However, I have placed the animations on the WWW in order for others to have free access to them. It is my desire that others who find such animations helpful to teach wave phenomena, acoustics, and vibration to use them to enhance their educational experience. Lately I have been bombarded with questions asking for permission to use my animations in presentations, or in the classroom. Rather than attempt to try to answer every email question I have instead summarized my responses below.
Acceptable use of animations
- Using or showing animations in a classroom.
This is the reason I put the animations on the WWW instead of just keeping them on my laptop. Please feel free to use them in the classroom, or to have students look at them during or after class.
- Incorporating an animation into a PowerPoint presentation.
This is prabably the most often asked question, from grade school students, to high school teachers, to college professors, to scientists making presentations before professional meetings. Please feel free to download any animation and incorporate it into your presentation. I only ask that you acknowledge where you obtained the animation, by inserting a byline along with the animation, something like:
Animation courtesy of Dr. Dan Russell, Grad. Prog. Acoustics, Penn State
- Linking or Deep-linking to specific pages.
I have absolutely no problem with linking to any of my webpages from another website. However, I would ask that you link to either the main page
Acoustics and Vibration Animations - Dan Russell, Grad. Prog. Acoustics, Penn State or to the specific page you wish to refer students to
The Doppler Effect and Sonic Booms - Dan Russell, Grad. Prog. Acoustics, Penn State I would prefer that you link to a page rather than to a specific animated image, mainly because I have packaged the animations along with descriptions to be as complete and as helpful as possible.
- Using a single animation on your homepage.
This isn't really what I created the images for - I created them to be used to help teach difficult concepts in acoustics, not to be used as "cool" images on a personal webpage. However, I realize that I have been guilty of "stealing" other people's images for some of my own pages. So, I would simply ask that if you embed one of my animations in your webpage that you make it a hot link to the page where you obtained the animation
<a href="http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/waves/wavemotion.html">
<img src="http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Demos/waves/Lwave.gif" border=0>
</a>
and that you add a byline next to (or under) the animation, something like: Animation courtesy of Dr. Dan Russell, Grad. Prog. Acoustics, Penn State.
Unacceptable use of animations
- Outright copying and re-posting any content from my webpages. There are few things that make me more angry than surfing the web and finding my own original material re-posted (text, images and animations) on somebody else's website or blog without my permission and without any citation or acknowledgement that I am the original creator of this material. Feel free to link directly to my pages, or to use them as outlined above, but if you chose to just copy and repost my material on your own website, then be prepared to incur my wrath.
- Incorporating an animation into for-profit media package.
I have had several requests to "purchase" my animations so that they may be incoporated into a CD-ROM or multimedia package to accompany a textbook. This goes against my intent to make these animations available to the general public for free educational use, and I will not give permission for any one else to make money off of the animations I have created.
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