Introduction to Copyright
As educators, we strive to provide students with a rich and engaging course experience. That often involves using a variety of resources, examples, images, texts, videos, and other outside materials to illustrate, enlighten, describe, motivate, assess or humanize our instruction for our students. That's a good thing! Using materials created by others is essential to our work as educators. It is also essential that we make informed decisions regarding the copyright and use of the outside materials we select. It serves as a good model for our students, it maintains the integrity of our courses and Harper College, and it's simply the right thing to do!
Copyright Basics
What is protected by copyright?
Protected
- Creative and intellectual work
- Fixed in a tangible medium of expression
Not Protected
- Factual information
- "Unfixed" works
- Items protected by patents
When does copyright protection begin?
- Immediately
- Automatically
Works do not have to have a copyright notice posted or be registered in any way in order to be protected by copyright. This means that everything from a novel to a napkin doodle has full and automatic copyright protections from the moment they are "fixed in a tangible medium of expression".
What does copyright protect?
Copyright grants the owner a bundle of rights. These include the right to:
- Make copies of the work
- Distribute/sell/rent/lend copies of the work
- Perform or display the work publicly
- Make derivative works, like translations, adaptations, and reinterpretations
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