According to copyright law within the United States, the Calvin and Hobbes comic on the syllabus is protected. Modern copyright law states that anything created is covered for the life of the author plus 70 years. Due to this fact I would make the claim that this comic is therefore violating copyright law as outlined by the U.S. Copyright Office.  They state that, Bill Watterson, being the owner of the copyright for the cartoon has the exclusive right to his work which includes displaying the work publicly. Since the HIST 390 sight is public, I would count this as being a public display, causing it to violate copyright laws. This phenomenon could be avoided if permission is granted by the author, or if the site is password protected or some other measure is taken to remove the site from the public. While this is not a very big violation of copyright law, it is still a violation which needs to be fixed. In the future copyright education should become more wide spread to prevent any serious damage to be done by such light offenses.