There is a lot of that going around. A Private high school had some of their data hacked from a commercial education storage/software site and held for ransom.

And here is my greetings from another person in the lovely Shanandoah Valley (Harrisonburg). --Richard

Most likely a Red-tailed Hawk or similafr hawk. Read:https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Red-tailed_Hawk/id
and note their ddiscussion of regional differences. --Richard

My first thought is a hawk, probably young. I am assuming all the photos are of the same bird. If so, then put a bit more brown (yellow) into it, so all three photos look alike. Just my thoughts. My guess is an immature red-tailed hawk, but maybe AZ has differeent hawks. --Richard

Do you have any other photos of this bird? It looks to me like an immature house sparrow, maybe a female. But don't trust my word for it. --Riochard

You have correctly, in my opinion, noted that the legality of something is not the end of it all. In fact, ethics really has to do with my own values and the values I want society to have.

But there is one more legal issues and distinction. Is the photo to be used as advertisement or for "editorial" purposes. Photos taken to support a photojournalism story, say of a bui9lding decaying with people in it, is editorial. That same photo print on the front of a news magazine is advertisement and not editorial. My understanding is that the editroial photos are covered under the First Amendment to the US Constituioon while the cover photo is not. But when teahcing this, it would be good to check with a lawyer.

I, too, am glad "students" are being exposed to the topic of ethics for photographers and journalism.

I have just too comments, but they might get long.

1. Part of such a course to make us aware of ethical issues that we did not know were issues of concern. So, don't trust our gut feelings but if our gut is worried, then we probably should not do it.

One issue that photojournalist do not seem to realize or they ignore it. That is, that long lenses "lie." That is. long lenses compress distances in depth. So, I have seen pictures of demonstrations taken with long lenses, and the people look packed in and sometimes this makes the protest look more "dangerous" than it was.

2. You may be planning on doing this, but do acquaint your class with when model releases (including how to handle releases for children which is more involved). Any human is a model needing a release unless the photo is used for "editorial" purposes. There are also property releases, vintage image releases, etc. The support section of Shutterstock has good resources on this topic, but so do other places. When I have been in majority world countries (years ago called third world), I always ask peo0ple if I can take their photo before taking their picture. One time in Guatemala, a young girl wanted me to pay to take the picture of her weighing out vegetables she was selling to us. I wanted the photo, so I paid the quarter or some such amount.

In Albania all of the people I asked said I could photograph them with a smile. But be careful in stores. Outside of a Tirana supermarket in a mall, I tried to take a picture to document that such places existed, and I almost got physically busted by a store security person. So, my camera went away quickly in my bag.

Also, photographing embassy buildings, even US ones, in some countries can result in a confrontation with security personnel as my wife can tell about her taking a picture of the US embassy in Belize from the road outside the gates. Even here in the US there are some tight practices by some firms. I have never been stopped from taking train photos even when I get close to track in the trainyard here in our town in Virginia. But when I tried to get close to a small transfer engine on the tracks at a feed mill, I was quite quickly chased off of the property by an angry plant boss. So, since streets in the US are usually considered public property, I took the photo from the street.

So, be careful and error on the side of prudence unless you are willing to defend yourself in a courtroom and that maybe not in you country of citizenship. Research what you can, talk to careful and knowledgeable photographers that know the place you will be. But even experiencede photographers might not really know the law and the practice.

[an edit] BTW, I should have clarified that in many US cities sidewalks might be considered public property but not the streets. Be very careful or you can be arrested for jay walking if you cross the street in the middle of a block instead of at the crosswalks. In some cities, jay waling is ignored, but in others the book may be thrown at you if the local officials do not like your journalistic perspective. With respect to my feed mill experience, I took the picture from the grass right beside the curbing on the street since there were no sidewalks.

I think you have asked a good question. I have had a mirrorless for two years now a Sony A6000 and have had no problems, but I do not shot close to the zenith very often. I'm wondering if there isn't some stopping down during composition se as not to burn out the eye of a person using the eyepiece and not to burn out the LCD display. Some of my previous digital cameras opened up in darker spots so the photographer could see for composition and the stopped down to take the photo. Might the engineers make it work the other way, too? As a physics prof who taught electronics for years, you now have me wondering aboutthis.

I have used AVC Free for years and have been very pleased. However, I just now downloaded and installed VLC because at the suggestions here.

If you try AVC Free make sure it is the free version found at:
https://www.any-video-converter.com/products-freeware/

As to sending by email, if you use Gmail and have its Drive, then use it to store it and make sure you have the link open to the person you are sending the link to. I prefer toi put it on my own website in a folder that has no link to it from anywhere (to make sure it is secure). Then I pass the full link to the person I am sharing with.

I want to clarify the relationship between house sparrows and house finches with the latest DNA and chromosome research. (As a retired professor, I will probably be pedantic. My apologies ahead of time.)

The house sparrow is not a finch. Being related with respect to biological taxonomy does not mean being the same. Here is how the classification tree goes: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. These may be further sub-divided. For example, order has suborders, and suborders have infraorders which can have parvorder and then superfamilies. All modern birds are in the class Aves. This is divided into two superorders of which we are only concerned with Neognathae. Then skipping some divisions, we note that all the so-called perching birds or songbirds are in the order of Passeriformes. To get to the House Sparrow (and Old-World Sparrow), we go to the infraorder Passerides, then the parvorder Passerida and then family Passeridae and genus/species, Passer domesticus. The house finches share the same parvorder but are of the family Fringillidae and then the genus/species of Haemorhous mexicanus. As to being related, the house finch, purple finch and Cassin's finch are in the same genus but are differing species. [Refer to Wikipedia for the most recent classifications.]

I usually just upload large filles to a folder on my web site that is never linked to. Then I send the web address to the person who wants to download it. We all have a website for our photos. Correct? --Richard

Well, I am not an expert on biological classification. What I meant by studying sparrows is that I have photographed many of them. Which brings to mind that I really like the clarity of detail in your photos and the ones fare-to-face. Back to classification: Wikipedia calls the house sparrows Passeridae Passer domesticus while house finches are Fringillidae Haemorhous mexicanus. Wikipedia is usually fairly up-to-date. I do have an email in to one of the biology profs I call my friends, but I'm guessing we have the answer (for now!) --Richard

LHammer, I like your sequence of glasses with lime slices and ice cubes (at least I thought that is what they might be). The last one in particular took my eye. While it is static, the bubbles give me a sense of being dynamic. [BTW, say hello to my brother and sister-in-law in san Antonia. :)] --Richard

I understand and actually have appreciated studying sparrows, which you have shown to have done very well. For two and a half years, my wife and I spent most of our time in Albania *hence my profile photo) from Jan. 2014-Aug. 2016. The attached photo (I sure hope it is small since I do not want to compete with your gallery) is from there. I had not expected to see such an abundance of sparrows.

sparrows on a wire between buildings, Lezhë, Albania

I have shot more than my share of sparrows, and so with asurance, I agree that these are great. A good eye and, I'm guessing, good equipment.
But I must disagree with MBW. Sparrows are hardly neglected, at least here in Harrisonburg, VA, USA. :) --Richard

Well as a retired physics prof this makes sense to me, but I'd like to try it out. In this pandemic, we just do not get out much, so how to get some seltzer water is the issue.
The physics is that apparently the density of grapes is close to that of water, but if they are slightly less then the grapes will tend to float. But if they are slightly more dense than water they will sink until the attaching bubbles become enough to make the density of the grape and bubbles to be less than that of water. They then float up until enough bubbles pop at the surface for the density to large enough for the grape to sink again, etc., etc. --Richard