Resources
Understanding and adhering to copyright law is crucial to protect yourselves, your Teacher Centers, and your participants. As educators, modeling appropriate and legal use of copyrighted materials is critical in helping educators to better understand the complex issues surrounding copyright.
All of the information contained here is educational. None of the information is, or should be considered to be, legal advice.
Fair Use Rules of Thumb:
- If you are not sure, err on the side of caution and request the necessary permissions
- Provide links to articles and videos rather than copying and uploading it directly
- Allows instructors to share up to 10% of a resource for instructional purposes. For example, if you have a 300-page book and would like to share a 20-page chapter with your students, fair use would generally allow you to scan the chapter, share online with your students. Rule: 10% or 1 chapter, whichever first.
- Does not allow you to reuse materials semester after semester, but instead only for one instructional period (such as a semester). If you keep sharing a copyrighted resource with your students, it's likely that you're violating copyright. Fair use in this way applies to one semester. After that, you must get permissions from copyright holder, open-access, or a library license.
- Evaluating the usability of resources for online instruction- Stanford University has complied a substantial list of practical examples of how fair use might or might not apply for using particular resources. This helpful list includes examples for text-based resources (such as journal articles), artwork, audiovisual materials, music, parodies, and online resources.
- If you are using a resources that was created in another country, you need to consider not only U.S.-based copyright policies and laws, and the laws from the country in which the resource was created. Using international resources complicates the decision about those resources can be used for instructional purposes. Rule: use whichever is stricter.
- Requesting necessary permissions may be painful as they may take a lot of time or cost a fee. You may have to alter your plans if permissions are not granted. Again, protect yourself by playing it safe.
As a side note: Please remember that anything created by a salaried teacher belongs to the school district and anything created by a student belongs to the student.
TEACH Act:
- https://www.usg.edu/legal/teach_act
- https://www.american.edu/library/documents/upload/copyright_for_teaching.pdf
- https://www.copyright.gov/docs/regstat031301.html
- http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/teachact/distanceeducation
Copyright Resources for Teachers:
- http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/copyright.html
- http://www.loc.gov/teachers/copyrightmystery/text/
Columbia Fair Use Checklist:
NYIT LibGuides: Copyright: