Our brief discussion about copyright law and the internet at the end of class today left me with some questions about our final project: is it legal to pass of real media as part of a fictional world, that is to fit it into a fictional framework?

For example, if I found a news article about an unidentied body mysteriously discovered in a Louisiana swamp, could I write a mystery in which that is the body of the victim and link to that article as part of the evidence?

Another example, if I found a particularly hilarious picture of a super wild party somewhere, could I link to it as a photo of a party I describe in a story? To go more extreme, could I state that some of the people at the party are specific characters in my text?