Credit to the Authors

Copyright isn't something students generally consider. Maybe I've pondered it cropping up down the road, sometime when my work expands beyond essays, but at the moment why should I care? Answer: Lawsuits.
The default copyright laws in the USA are extremely restrictive. Little activites using P2P file sharing (think limewire) carry heavy penalties. The individual is often pitted in legal battles against fat conglomerates, and who can doubt the result of that lawsuit.
The default copyright law in the constitution (title 17) is a necessary evil (though it needn't necessarily be evil). It provides author's (me, you, anyone) with automatic rights of ownership to thier own work once it is in a fixed tangible medium. Author's have incentive to create because they are legally assured that it will remain under their ownership. While stimulating creative and intellectual work is the bright side of copyright, the dark side is the overly restrictive terms imposed on the copyrighted material. Copyright will last the author's lifetime plus another 70 years. That right, even Mickey Mouse isn't public domain yet. These lingering copyrights become downright explotive when it comes to the ability to copyright typical English words out of the dicitonary. I think it is right for author's to own their work, but not for me or you to get fined $300,000 for using the term "entrepreneur". Thats why I favor less restrictive kinds of copyright.
One can opt for less constraining options that ensure you title to your own work and allow to others use it according to the terms you imply. The possibilites are numerous, but, for example, you could attach to you work an attribution non-commercial copyright, meaning that others can reproduce your work but for non-commercial purposes only (so they cannot profit off it). These alterantive copyrights are more equitable because they encourage a sharing community where author's and consumers mingle together rather than stand seperated by a web of legalities and decades old pitfalls. Author's will still profit off their work. The work itself will just be more accessible to the public, offering the author in return greater expose. A mutually beneficially situation where I stand at much less risk of accidently breaking the law and serving jail time.