Copyright and Fair Use are two important things to understand in education and in the workplace. I’ll break it all down for you here.
Copyright basically protects a person’s creation from being used without their permission or without compensating them. Check out this short video: (not accessible on SchuyPads)
http://www.mpa.org/content/congratulations-our-2012-copyright-awareness-scholarship-winners
Fortunately for education, the Fair Use Doctrine (Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976) says that copyrighted works can be used without permission or compensation to the original creator if the use meets certain criteria.
1. The purpose has to be for non-profit educational use and you have to credit the original author. So you can use a work “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research” without committing copyright infringement. So if you wanted to show a clip of your favorite movie as part of an educational presentation on the Holocaust, you can do that. BUT you can’t take the clip and “release it into the wild” without its educational context. You should always credit the original author. Another part of this is that you have to “transform” the work. It can’t be put out there for the same purposes the original creator had. So, in the example of your movie clip, the creator intended for it to be entertainment. You can’t use it for the same reason as part of any work that you create. Your reason needs to fit one from the list quoted from the Fair Use Doctrine.
2. The nature of the original creation needs to be taken into account too. You’ll have a much easier time claiming Fair Use if the work is a published, factual or nonfiction based piece that directly relates to some educational standard being taught. It’s more difficult to defend your work if it is an unpublished, creative, fiction piece. It’s not impossible but your reasoning needs to be very strong. For example, it is easier to use a clip from a documentary and claim Fair Use than it is to use a clip from a popular movie. Always credit the orginal creator.
3. How much are you using? The general guideline when it comes to music is 30 second clips. Video’s guideline is 10% or less of the overall work. Written works are also a 10% guideline. Basically, you use a relatively small quantity of the original work and credit the original creator.
4. Lastly, how is it going to effect the copyrighted work in the market? If your use of the work could replace the sale of the original, you can’t claim Fair Use. If your work is made public on the Web or another public forum, it is harder to claim Fair Use. If your work has repeated or long term use, it is harder to claim Fair Use.
How do you know for sure? You can use this really handy checklist created by the good people of the Columbia University Libraries Copyright Advisory Office:
http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/files/2009/10/fairusechecklist.pdf