So after surfing through this website and figuring out what its purpose was, it was very interesting to find that by typing in a word or phrase in the search box, you can look into the past and see what has been written in TIME Magazine.  I am pretty sure that there are copyright laws that prohibit the use of written articles that were published in TIME Magazine.  This website gives you access to everything that has been written in TIME Magazine from 1923 – 2006.  Just like the videos that we watched about music sampling the phrases and bits and pieces of articles that have been written by TIME Magazine are exposed through this website for anyone to use.  There should be a method of insuring that the words that were written in TIME Magazine are protected.

If this website was used solely for educational use I do not feel that this would be a problem.  If you were looking for something to write about it could be very easy to search through this website and use of its content.  We learn in the process of writing papers that credit must be given if any words from a source are used.  Those words must be cited in some method depending on the style of paper that you are writing.  It is no different using the words or phrases from any other written content and giving credit where it is deserved.  What is interesting is that there is a link provided by this website on how to cite material by this website.

In the case of this website, credit should still be given to TIME Magazine since everything that is shown in this website are words written in TIME Magazine.  Anyone who should stumble upon this website might cite this website as their source but they would be incorrect.  There should be a warning statment that exemplifies that if any content is used from this particular website that TIME Magazine should be given credit for the words that are used.

When you first open this website there is no statement that shows that TIME Magazine has given permission to this website to expose its content.  There is a statement that says that its content has been taken from the TIME Archive (which us freely available online) and that it could not release its full context.  In my opinion this website could be used as a tool to search material that has been written in TIME Magazine but those that are conducting research for a particular type of context should use TIME Magazine’s website to download its full context.  I do not believe that this website is ethically using TIME Magazine’s content and it should have received permission from TIME Magazine to expose its contents in the manner that it has.  I believe that if anyone is going to use this website to conduct research on a particular word or phrase they should properly cite the source even if it is coming from another source that makes reference to the content that is being used.

Unfortunately for TIME there content is accessible through their free online archive and this particular website is taking advantage of the information that TIME is providing.  I do not believe that this website is providing its information legally since their is no way to regulate the information that is used by those that are visiting their website. The least that this website could do to ensure that TIME was cited properly is create a link to generate a cite for the particular magazine that the words or phrase are being used from.

We have learned that the amount of information flow on the internet can be endless.  There are ways to properly give credit to those that deserve credit for writing certain material.  Unfortunately when information is not protected by copyright laws that information is subject to be used however the user pleases.  Just as music can be downloaded from the internet to make new music so can words and phrases from different sources.  It must be more difficult to regulate the words that are being used that were put together by someone else.  With the continuation of digitizing all written material that has ever been written that information becomes susceptible to being used in other context without receiving credit where it is deserved.  Hopefully as technology continues to evolve there will be some sort of software that will have the capability to sift through a data base that will be able to decipher written material and compare it to known written material to ensure its authenticity and originality.