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Resources for teaching copyright and fair use

Elementary school curriculum, middle school curriculum, high school curriculum, professional development for teachers, sample curriculum videos.

Educator Experience with C&C Resources

“ I really appreciate the materials you guys provide for free. I've been using your materials for the past three years and my students love them! ” Trauvello Stevensen KIPP DC: Valor Academy Middle School

“ I'm a student. And I really like this because all the videos are enjoyable, and it's not like a boring documentary. You have characters, and you present the information in a fun and interesting way. Thank you! ” Student Anonymous, submitted through the feedback form at copyrightandcreativity.org/feedback. (C&C does not collect personal information from minors.)

“ This Curriculum gives me quality, well-vetted, and easy-to-use lessons that are ready to go. ” Kami Cottrell Educator, Encinitas Union School District

“ Finally someone has made copyright, fair use, and creative commons understandable for young people. ” Diana Graber Co-founder of CyberWise, founder of Cyber Civics, winner of NAMLE 2017 Media Literacy Teacher Award

“ These lessons are rich and thorough. ” Kami Cottrell Educator, Encinitas Union School District

“ 84 percent of students said they learned something new and useful. ” Center on Media and Child Health, Boston Children’s Hospital From "Evaluation of the Copyright and Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens Curriculum — Summary"

“ The curriculum was successful at teaching students about key concepts of copyright. ” Center on Media and Child Health, Boston Children’s Hospital From "Evaluation of the Copyright and Creativity for Ethical Digital Citizens Curriculum — Summary"

“ Great resource for my blended eLearning students/brick and mortar students. I have been trying to find something relevant and interest-catching – these do it. As a graphic design instructor, this is a very relevant topic in our curriculum maps. Thank you so much. ” Lori Jenkins Polk County Public Schools

“ These lessons are incredible. They help me teach the importance of copyright and fair use as my class does weekly research and inquiry. ” Jennifer Asay M.Ed., fourth grade teacher

“ This curriculum walks you through what copyright protects, and what it doesn’t protect, so students understand their rights as digital citizens. ” Jerry Berman Founder of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and the Internet Education Foundation (IEF)

“ American Association of School Librarians Winner of Best Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning of 2021 ”

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REPEAT WINNER:

The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons

• Author By Kathleen Morris
• Publication date August 21, 2021

It has never been easier to publish online or consume digital content. This comes with many advantages and can make teaching and learning so much more targeted and impactful. Living in a digital world also brings up many questions — one issue that is very important to understand is copyright. Whether you’re an educator, student, or blogger, copyright is a topic that is often overlooked as it can be confusing or just not considered important.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of myths about copyright circulating amongst the education community. Maybe you’ve heard that you can use any images or texts you find online if you’re using them for education? Or perhaps you’ve heard that you can use any songs in your videos as long as you use less than 30 seconds? Yep, both not true.

Copyright is important for all teachers, students, and bloggers to know about. And it doesn’t have to be as complicated as you think. We’re here to break down the basics of copyright and other related topics like fair use, public domain, and Creative Commons.

There’s a lot to learn in this post so remember to bookmark it and use the menu below to navigate.

Copyright Rules To Remember

What Is Copyright?

What Is Fair Use

What Is Public Domain?

What Is Creative Commons

Finding Creative Commons Images

Copyright And Music

Copyright And Video

Copyright Text Or Curriculum Materials

Copyright Infringement

Copyright Considerations When Publishing Online

Using Quotes In Blog Posts

Adding Your Own Creative License

Conclusion And Summary Slideshow

Let’s get started with the basics.

Let’s begin with the 5 main rules you need to remember about copyright.

1) Just because you found it online, doesn’t mean it’s free to use (even if you’re a teacher or student).

2) There are a lot of resources you can use freely including work that has a Creative Commons license or is in the public domain.

3) You have a right as a creator to have your work protected from copying and you can also give your own content a Creative Commons license.

4) If in doubt about using content, ask the creator for permission, find a free alternative, make your own material, or purchase an alternative that has the usage rights you’re after.

5) Instead of looking for loopholes, consider whether you’re being the most responsible and ethical digital citizen you can be.

📌 Want a poster for your classroom or staffroom? Download a letter-sized poster of the 5 rules to remember here.

Copyright is a form of legal protection offered to creators by default. That means, in many countries (like the USA and Australia), you don’t have to register your work to have it protected by copyright.

Some creators do register their work with the U.S. Copyright Office (or the equivalent in their own country). Usually, this is to provide strong evidence to a court that the creator is the copyright holder if there is ever an infringement case. You don’t need to have registered your work with the Copyright Office in order to pursue a copyright infringement case.

It’s a myth that you have to display a copyright symbol © to protect your work.

Can Others Use Your Copyrighted Work?

If you’re a copyright owner, someone else can’t copy your work without your permission. They also can’t perform the work, distribute copies of the work, display the work publicly, or create derivatives.

If someone does use work that’s protected by copyright without permission, that’s called copyright infringement. We’ll cover this later.

Who Owns The Copyright?

Usually, the creator of a work is the copyright owner but the copyright can also be sold, traded, or inherited.

What Does Copyright Cover?

Copyright covers both published and unpublished works that are tangible in format. So, all tangible original work is protected by copyright whether it’s a blog post, music, artwork, photo, play, poem, novel, dance choreography, movie, software, architecture, or more.

Copyright does not protect works that are not tangible, like facts or ideas. Copyright only protects the tangible expression of your ideas. So you might have a great idea for a blog post about teaching 5th grade math but unless you actually write the post, you can’t protect the idea that’s floating around in your head. And you can’t stop others from writing about the same idea.

You can read more about the basics of copyright on the U.S. Copyright Office website (or on your own country’s official site). There are some variations between countries.

What Is Fair Use?

So now you understand that most of the work you’re accessing online or in books is going to be protected by copyright (images, text, videos, music, and more). This means you can’t necessarily use these materials freely on your class blog, website, or with your students in your classroom.

“But fair use applies here doesn’t it”, I hear you ask? Because you’re using images, text, videos, or music for educational purposes, that’s okay, right? Teachers and students don’t have to worry?

Not necessarily.

The more you dig in to the topic of fair use, the more you come to realize it is a gray area.

As the U.S. Copyright Office explains, The Classroom Use Exemption 17 U.S.C. §110(1) allows you to use copyrighted material when you meet certain criteria.

For “fair use” to apply, the copyrighted material must be used:

• for performances or displays (e.g. acting a play, reading poetry, watching a movie, listening to music)
• as part of face-to-face teaching activities
• in a nonprofit educational institution
• in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction
• using a lawful copy of the works (e.g. a movie you purchased legitimately)

If you’re teaching online or wanting to hand out copies of work, then you may not be covered by this exemption. Furthermore, these fair use laws are specific to the U.S. so if you’re in another country, you may not be covered. Some countries don’t have a fair use law or they may be more specific or broad than the U.S.

For example, in Australia, there is “ Fair Dealing ” which is an exception to copyright infringement that’s a little more specific than in the U.S. You may be able to use portions of copyright material without permission for the purpose of:

• research or study
• criticism or review
• parody or satire
• reporting news, or
• enabling a person with a disability to access the material

Overall, fair use isn’t as simple as it seems, right? Instead of trying to find loopholes with fair use, a better approach is to look for materials that you can use freely.

The best place to start is with public domain or Creative Commons materials. So let’s dig into that.

What Is The Public Domain?

In general, in the U.S. , copyright lasts for the life of the author plus seventy years after the author’s death.

What happens to work after the copyright expires? Well, it becomes part of the public domain. Works can also enter the public domain if they are factual (e.g. charts or calendars), they are published before a certain date, or a creator has assigned their work to the public domain.

When something is in the public domain it means the work is owned by the public and you don’t have to get permission to use it. This is great for educators looking for materials they can freely use with their students.

Example Public Domain Resources

There are many places online where you can find books, images, audio, and videos that are in the public domain.

Some popular choices for public domain materials include:

• Project Gutenberg : 60,000+ eBooks that can be downloaded (most are older works with expired copyright). 
• Faded Page : 5,000+ eBooks that are in the public domain in Canada.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art : includes more than 400,000 images from The Met collection.
• Smithsonian Institution Public Domain Images : a collection of 3,000+ images housed on Flickr.
• Librivox : public domain audiobooks that are read by volunteers from around the world.
• Prelinger Archives : thousands of public domain films (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur).

What Is Creative Commons?

Sometimes creators (copyright holders) are happy for others to use their work, as long as they meet certain conditions.

A creator can place a Creative Commons license on their work which describes the terms of using, modifying, and sharing the works. A simple license removes the hassle of others having to ask the creator for permission.

Creative Commons is an international organization that made this system possible. The mission of the Creative Commons organization is clear,

By helping people and organizations share knowledge and creativity, we aim to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world.

If a creator decides to attach a Creative Commons license to their work, there are six Creative Commons licenses to choose from.

I have written a post on my own blog about copyright and Creative Commons that includes a poster to simplify the licenses.

The poster includes a Creative Commons license so you’re welcome to use the poster in your classroom or share it with your colleagues (a poster about Creative Commons licenses that includes a Creative Commons license — meta, right?). There is a PDF version of the poster on my blog.

👉🏽 If you’d like to learn more about Creative Commons licenses, the video below by McLaughlin Library is a good place to start. You can learn more about Creative Commons Licenses on the official website of the organization as well.

If you need images for your blog, website, videos, or other projects, Creative Commons images are a good choice. As long as you’re using the image according to the license with attribution, you won’t be infringing copyright.

If you’re looking for images that have a Creative Commons license, there are an increasing number of options out there. We’ll show you some of the more popular options, but first, it’s important to understand attribution.

All Creative Commons resources require attribution unless they’re licensed with the least restrictive Creative Commons Zero license. That means no attribution is required and you can use the resource however you like.

Let’s take a look at how to attribute Creative Commons images. The same instructions apply to other works (text, videos, etc.).

How To Attribute Creative Commons Images

When you use a resource with a Creative Commons license, you have to attribute it in a particular way. Attributing means sharing the details of the work and giving credit.

The acronym  TASL  can help us remember what to include.

• T itle of the image or material (don’t worry if there is no title)
• A uthor  or creator of the image/material
• S ource of the image/material. Where is it from? Include a link if possible so others can find it
• L icense — include which of the six Creative Commons licenses applies to the work

Here’s a photo I found on Wikimedia Commons of a bridge in Western Australia. You can see I included the attribution below the image.

If you use images from Wikimedia Commons , getting the attribution information is easy. As you go to download the image, you’re prompted to copy the attribution information.

You can copy the attribution information either in plain text format (as in caption above), or as HTML as shown below.

If you insert HTML into your blog post, it’ll become hyperlinked. Learn more about inserting custom HTML in Edublogs/CampusPress/WordPress block editor here.

👉🏽 If you’d like to learn more about attribution and explore some examples of ideal, acceptable, and unacceptable attributions, check out this page on the Creative Commons wiki . There’s also a handy PDF about attribution on the Australian Creative Commons website.

Now you know the basics of attribution. Let’s take a look at where you can find images and music that have a Creative Commons license. We’ll begin with images that don’t require attribution.

Creative Commons Zero Images

(No Attribution Required)

There are a number of websites where you can find images that are free to use without attribution (Creative Commons Zero).

I’ve written a post on my blog about the best websites to find Creative Commons images that either don’t require attribution or the attribution is included within the image like the example below from Photos For Class :

The sites reviewed in my post and the summary diagram below are:

• Photos for Class*
• Openclipart
• Pics4Learning

* Photos For Class currently has fewer options than it used to. The team has told us they aim to improve this in mid-2020. 🤞🏽

Here’s a summary poster that you’re free to use in your own teaching.

The one issue that a lot of educators overlook is that a lot of these free image sites are age-restricted. So if you teach younger students, many sites are not going to be suitable.

Another thing to consider is that even though the images from these sites don’t need to be attributed (or they include the attribution information within the image) it’s still a good idea to teach students about copyright, Creative Commons, and attribution. As producers and consumers on the web, these are really vital understandings for students and all internet users. Just remember, even if attribution isn’t required, it’s always appreciated by the creator.

Creative Commons Images That Require Attribution

Apart from the sites listed above with images that don’t require attribution, there are other places to find images with one of the six Creative Commons licenses that do require attribution.

Creative Commons Search Engine

The first place you might want to look is the search engine on the official Creative Commons website. This is an excellent tool that was updated in 2019. It allows you to search through millions of CC images from more than 20 different sites.

When using the search engine, you can easily filter the search results — for example, you can filter by file type, use, or license.

There’s also a Creative Commons search browser extension that allows you to look for Creative Commons images on the go.

Wikimedia Commons

We already mentioned Wikimedia Commons above in the section about attribution. Wikimedia Commons has a large collection of images, audio, and videos that are free to use. Most require attribution.

Wikimedia Commons collections are included in the Creative Commons search engine so that tool really is a one-stop shop.

Search For Creative Commons Images On Google

Sadly, it is common practice for many teachers, students, and bloggers to take images straight from Google. Most images on Google are protected by copyright and using these images is illegal and unethical.

You may know that you can do an advanced search on Google to find Creative Commons images, although it does require a few steps. First, you need to filter your search results to find images that can be reused.

This video from Jurupa School District explains how to do that.

Then the next step, that is not shown in the video, is you have to click through to the site the image is from, look for the Creative Commons license, and attribute your image correctly.

As we saw above, using the Creative Commons search engine or Wikimedia Commons makes it really simple to attribute your chosen image. All you really have to do is copy/paste. Using Google search doesn’t make it easy to attribute Creative Commons images. So this is not the way we’d recommend finding Creative Commons images online.

No doubt there have been many times when you want to use music on your blog, in your content, or in class. When you’re creating a video it can be extremely tempting to use popular music that reflects the mood and emotion of the footage. Or maybe you want students to play popular music at a performance or public event.

As you probably know, most music is protected by copyright. It doesn’t matter if you paid for a song or not, it’s still protected by copyright. It doesn’t matter if you’re only using 30 seconds or less of a song, it’s still protected by copyright.

Let’s take a look at some specific examples of music and copyright.

Using Music In Projects Like Videos

Normally, you can’t just use any music you like in your projects or videos.

However, in many countries, there are exceptions. For example, in the U.S. and  Australia , you are allowed to copy music to add to a video if:

a) it’s for educational purposes  and b) you’re not sharing your video publicly (or selling it!)

So, if you make a video with music that’s protected by copyright, it’s not okay to publish this on a public blog, social media, YouTube, and so on. And you couldn’t show your video at a public event. However, it’s okay if the video is just being shown  privately  to teachers, students, and families at home/school.

It’s also important to note that background music is  not considered  “educational use”.

Paying For Music And Streaming

There are popular sites and apps where you can pay to download or stream music legally — for example, Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Spotify.

You can listen to your downloaded music yourself, but can’t upload the music to your blog or to a video or other project you’re working on.

It’s fine to stream music videos on sites like YouTube too but it’s not usually legal to download the audio from a YouTube video as explained in  this article.

Also, streaming music is meant for personal use — not for a public broadcast.

As  Spotify  says,

…it’s not possible to use Spotify in public places (such as bars, restaurants, stores, schools, etc.). You may only make personal, non-commercial, entertainment use of the content.

Most streaming services are similar.

Embedding Music Videos

Embedding a music video from a site like YouTube or Vimeo into your blog is usually allowed.

As  Richard Byrne  says,

If the host provides an embed and you embed it using their code according to their rules (usually that means not trying to hide branding), you can embed it without violating copyright.

You can also link to music files or videos that are publicly available on the web.

Using Purchased CDs

Some people still listen to music by buying a CD or borrowing one from the library, although, of course, digital music is becoming a lot more popular than CDs in many parts of the world.

Again, you can’t copy the music from a CD and use it for another public project (e.g. upload it to your blog or add it to a public video). It doesn’t matter if you have purchased the CD legitimately.

👉🏽 If you’d like to learn more about using music in education for other purposes including school concerts and online learning, check out this fact sheet from the National Association of Music Education.

Creative Commons Or Copyright Free Music

Even though most music out there is protected by copyright, there are many places online to find Creative Commons or other copyright free music options.

You might first like to check if your district has any subscriptions you can make the most of. For example,  Soundzabound .

If this isn’t an option, there are lots of other sources of free music online.

Three options for free music and audio are:

Dig CC Mixter

Youtube audio library, bbc sound effects.

Let’s take a look at how these three sites work.

Dig CC Mixter  offers thousands of hours of free music.

The music on this site has different Creative Commons licenses so you need to check whether you need to attribute the music or not.

Educational Blogger Richard Byrne explains in a video how to use Dig CC Mixter and filter by license.

YouTube has a great library of music you can use. Visit the  Audio Library  on YouTube to browse the selections.

If you click on Attribution, you can filter your results to find music that does or doesn’t require attribution.

You can preview the music to see what it sounds like and download the music you want to use.

Here’s an example called Sunshine in my Heart by Jingle Punks.

During 2018,  the BBC  made over 16,000 sound effects available to use. These sound effects are not actually Creative Commons — they’re protected by copyright but the BBC gives permission for the sound effects be used for personal, educational, or research purposes.

You can browse by category to find the sort of sound effect you’re after for your project.

You should put a link in your project or blog post to say that your sound effects are from the BBC and link to  their site.

Here is an example of a sound clip. This is the sound of the surf at Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia.

Surf – Bondi Beach, bbc.co.uk , copyright 2020

Copyright And Videos

Where would we be without all the awesome video content we now have at our fingertips on the web? In the education world, extensive video libraries like YouTube are becoming priceless.

Video copyright can be complicated as video can draw together multiple elements — video footage, images, music, sound effects, and so on. When using, sharing, or creating video, you need to make sure all of these elements are not protected by copyright.

Can You Link Or Embed Videos?

You are free to embed any video from sites like  YouTube ,  Vimeo , TeacherTube , TedED etc. on your blog or website as long as it gives you the embed option. It’s a good idea to add a link to the video as well.

Linking or embedding from YouTube or other sites on the web is not considered copying. Just make sure the videos aren’t violating copyright. If they are, they’ll probably be taken down by the site eventually but some content gets through.

Can You Download Videos From Sites Like YouTube?

While linking and embedding videos is okay, you shouldn’t download videos from YouTube. Sometimes this is tempting for teachers especially if they have unreliable internet connectivity, they’re worried about a video being removed in future, or they want to add a video to a learning management system. However, downloading videos raises many legal questions and generally violates copyright.

Additionally, you can’t necessarily use parts of videos from YouTube (or other sources) to make mashups or remixes. If you want to cut or remix videos, it is better to use Creative Commons content, public domain content, or request permission from the copyright holder.

Uploading Your Own Videos To YouTube

If you want to upload your videos to a site like YouTube remember to respect copyright. You should only upload videos that you made or that you have permission to upload. Make sure there aren’t copyrighted elements (e.g. music or images) in your videos. Of course, get permission from your school or district if these videos are being used professionally.

Educators should be especially careful about permission if using footage of students. Some teachers use the blurring tools available in YouTube to blur student faces and identifying objects. Richard Byrne shares a demonstration of how to do this on his website.

👉🏽 If you’re a creator and would like to learn more about videos and copyright, YouTube has a useful playlist of eight videos on their YouTube Creators channel.

Showing Videos To Students

Teachers can show videos in class for educational reasons, such as videos legally uploaded to YouTube (however, some districts don’t allow YouTube to be used in schools).

If you have a legitimate copy of an offline video (e.g. DVD), you’re allowed to use this in class for face-to-face teaching as long as it’s for educational purposes (not for entertainment or a reward).

Remember, this would be in line with the U.S. fair use policies we described above, so check your own country’s guidelines if in doubt. If you’re in Australia, a useful website for all things copyright is https://www.smartcopying.edu.au

Copyright And Text Or Curriculum Materials

Say you’ve purchased a textbook or other teaching materials. You can obviously use these materials in class and you might be able to make photocopies, however, in most cases you can’t upload purchased curriculum or books to a public site. That means don’t put scans, photos, or PDFs of textbooks, worksheets, posters, picture books, novels, or other learning materials on your public blog or website.

If in doubt, seek guidance from the company you purchased the curriculum materials from about reuse.

Marketplaces Like Teachers Pay Teachers

Not so long ago, we were all purchasing our curriculum materials from professional organizations. Now anyone can be a creator and with the rise of sites like Teachers Pay Teachers, new copyright questions have arisen. As Education Week has pointed out, copyright infringement is rife on this popular marketplace.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you’re uploading to a site like Teachers Pay Teachers you need to make sure you have permission to use all your elements including fonts and images.

If you’re downloading resources from Teachers Pay Teachers, you need to seek clarification about how these can be used. And also keep an eye out for resources that look like they could be violating copyright before you use them (e.g. copies of a published textbook). There is limited vetting of copyright materials on Teachers Pay Teachers. As a savvy internet user, we all need to have an awareness of the larger copyright traps that are out there.

Link To Curriculum Resources

Linking may be a useful alternative to copying curriculum materials. If third-party text, articles, or other content is available on the web, teachers or students could include a link to the content on their blog or website.

Like embedding, linking is not a copyright activity because you’re not “copying” the content. You’re just providing a path to the original location that the readers can access themselves.

Creative Commons Textbooks And Curriculum

Another option to avoid copyright violations is to use curriculum materials that have Creative Commons licenses. One example is OpenStax . You can browse to find textbooks for a range of topics and the materials are free to use however you see fit.

You’ll find some more open textbooks and course materials listed on this Open Washington page.

We know that most images, text, music, and other content are protected by copyright by default. Using work protected by copyright without permission is called copyright infringement. This is unethical and illegal. “Using” the work might involve reproducing, displaying, distributing, performing, or making your own derivatives.

But I Won’t Be Caught…

If only that were true.

Google makes it incredibly easy for companies and content creators to seek out those posting their work on the web. In fact, most large companies now aggressively patrol the internet looking for copyright infringement.

Sadly, we are also noticing more and more “law firms” and organizations out there looking for copyrighted content as a way of generating business. They then contact the copyright holder offering their services to get the content removed (for a fee of course). It is a ruthless (and apparently profitable) practice.

Another issue that is important to be aware of involves Creative Commons Zero sites. There have been cases where people have used images from free image sites like Unsplash and then were hit with a copyright infringement case. Sometimes people put images up on these sites in order to sue. They leave the images up on the site until they are downloaded multiple times and then remove them. This is a dark side of Creative Commons Zero that’s important to be aware of.

What If I Am Caught?

In many countries, copyright infringement brings hefty penalties including fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars and imprisonment, depending on the situation.

Of course, a good offense is your best defense. Check your blogs and class websites for any potentially offending material. Has anyone uploaded images straight from other websites or Google? Are there are educational materials (e.g. copies of textbooks) that shouldn’t be there? Has copyrighted music been used publicly? If you find anything, just remove it.

The law requires copyright holders to give you (and the host of your site, such as Edublogs, WordPress, etc.) an official notification. Take these seriously and act quickly to remove what they want if you are in the wrong. That should be the end of it.

Here at Edublogs and CampusPress, we’re contacted about copyrighted materials regularly. These are mostly images from Google, curriculum documents, or PDFs (e.g. textbooks or sheet music), or music files.

We were once notified about a teacher with a blog on Edublogs that had a harmless world map image on his blog that he had presumably found using Google image search. When we contacted him telling him why we had removed the image, he asked if he and his students could write an apology letter to the copyright holder.

It was excellent – turning what could be a bit of an embarrassing mistake into a teachable moment for his students. Now this teacher had a good reason to discuss copyright and Creative Commons with his students.

Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, having a space to publish online like a blog or website is one of the best ways students can learn about copyright and Creative Commons.

Whether you’re a teacher, a student, or a regular blogger, when you’re publishing online you must do your best to be a responsible digital citizen. This means respecting others’ work and respecting copyright.

Here are three key things to remember when publishing online to be a legal and ethical digital citizen:

1) Steer Clear Of Google Images

Don’t copy images off Google or other websites. Even if you include an attribution it is still illegal and unethical.

If you like an image and don’t know where it originally came from, a reverse search might help.

If an image is created by someone that you can contact, you could always ask their permission to use it.

Remember the best bet is to find Creative Commons or public domain images. Otherwise, take/make your own images or purchase some from a stock photography website.

2) Embed Or Link To Audio Or Video Clips

If you’re going to include a video or an audio clip, embed the file from the source and include a link as well. Don’t download audio or video files as this brings up many questions about copyright.

If you’re embedding from a site like YouTube, make sure the content doesn’t violate copyright law. YouTube is usually pretty good at cracking down on this but there is some content on there that does violate copyright — e.g. copies of television shows.

3) Never Copy Someone Else’s Blog Post

You might find this a little hard to believe but unfortunately people copy posts from other blogs and publish them on their own site all the time. Or they publish the blog post in another format such as a PDF document or slideshow.

And in case you’re wondering, copying someone’s blog post and then including an attribution does not make this okay.

If you do want to share someone else’s blog post on your own blog, consider writing a short description of the post on your blog and then inviting readers to click on a link to read the post themselves. In your own post, you could include some key points about what you agreed or disagreed with. Or maybe you can expand on the topic in a different direction. All this would be perfectly acceptable and no doubt the author would appreciate the interaction.

Hopefully you now know that you definitely can’t copy and paste someone else’s whole blog post or image, but you can include a quote of some text.

Here are a few points to be aware of that we included in our post on The Edublogger about quotes :

• Make it obvious which words are your own, and which words belong to someone else by using quotation marks or block quotes.
• Make your quotes brief. There are no universal rules here. Some larger organizations have guidelines around how much you can quote (e.g.  Hubspot’s rules  are 75 words). If you’re unsure or think you might be using too much of someone’s article, contact them to ask permission. Never copy the whole post.
• Always include the person’s name, and link to their site, article, or book if you can.
• If you’re using blockquotes, the attribution could be before the quote, inside it, or below it.
• If you shorten a quote, use an ellipsis (…) in place of the missing words.
• If you’re adding any words or corrections to the quote, use brackets.

Adding Your Own Creative Commons License To Your Work

Earlier, we looked at the six types of Creative Commons licenses available to creators. If you’re publishing online, you’re a creator too! And you don’t have to be a professional. Maybe you share memes or lesson resources on social media? Perhaps you write blog posts? Maybe you take your own photographs that you share online?

Have you ever considered adding a Creative Commons license to your own original work?

As the Creative Commons organization explains,

When you apply a CC license, you give permission to anyone to use your material for the full duration of applicable copyright and similar rights.

This is therefore a serious decision but an important one. You can contribute to building a collection of art and knowledge that’s accessible to anyone in the world. How cool is that! You remain in control by choosing your own license, and people who like your work can use or share it without having to contact you for permission.

Before you choose a Creative Commons license, you need to make sure you are the copyright owner and the work is copyrightable (e.g. in a tangible format).

If you’re unsure which license to choose for your own work, there is an interactive tool on the Creative Commons website . This tool suggests a license after you answer a few questions. It also gives you a CC button that you can attach to your work to display your license.

If you would like to display your creative commons license on your blog, the easiest way is to use a text widget in your sidebar.

From your dashboard, go to Appearance > Widgets and select a Text widget to add to your sidebar. Paste the code provided by your Creative Commons license provider in the widget’s text box, and click “Save”.

Adults aren’t the only ones who can add Creative Commons licenses to their work. In many countries, children can too. What an authentic way for students to learn about copyright and sharing online.

Perhaps a whole class or school could make a library of Creative Commons content (e.g. images or music) that can be used freely by the education community? Talk about authentic learning!

If you’ve made it this far into the guide you will have realized that copyright is a vast and complex topic, however, you don’t need to be an expert to understand the basics.

We’ve made a collection of slides which you’re welcome to use in your own classroom or perhaps you’d like to use them as part of your professional development program. Want to make a copy? Scroll down for instructions (don’t request access).

Want a copy of the Google Slides presentation? Don’t request access, just follow the steps below.

1) Click on this link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jK-_bTIBa9CZAC-bqKd0PQc7ohG9L47KSdcvfHgIxqw/copy?usp=sharing

2) You will be prompted to make a copy (screenshot below).

3) The Slides will be saved in your Google Drive.

4) You can edit the Google Slides to suit.

Before we conclude, take a moment to reflect back on the rules to remember about copyright.

• Just because you found it online, doesn’t mean it’s free to use (even if you’re a teacher or student).
• There are a lot of resources you can use freely including work that has a Creative Commons license or is in the public domain.
• You have a right as a creator to have your work protected from copying and you can also give your own content a Creative Commons license.
• If in doubt about using content, ask the creator for permission, find a free alternative, purchase an alternative, or make your own material.
• Instead of looking for loopholes, consider whether you’re being the most responsible and ethical digital citizen you can be.

Do you have any other tips to add about copyright for educators, students, or bloggers? Be sure to leave a comment and let us know. We’d love to hear your suggestions.

For any specific questions regarding your own copyright dilemmas, please consult professional legal advice.

Edublogs is the oldest and most trusted web publishing platform for students and teachers around the globe. We have helped create and publish more than five million blogs, websites and portfolios since 2005 while providing teacher-friendly, student-safe WordPress solutions at scale.

We offer both cost-efficient and free options, along with site development, hosting, security, plugin and theme support to ensure your digital presence is meeting your goals in a fast-changing digital world.Want to learn more? Contact us to receive more information.

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152 thoughts on “ the educator’s guide to copyright, fair use, and creative commons ”.

Thank you so much for this wonderful guide! I have been teaching about copyright and fair use for years, but this is the most comprehensive guide I have found to date. I am also grateful for the list of sites with items in the public domain. I want to share these with my students since we will be blogging this year for the first time, and I want to make sure they don’t infringe on anyone’s copyright.

yah i get realy confused on copywrighting

This is an awesome post! I am currently taking ITEC 7455 where I am teaching students about Digital Citizenship! Copyrights was actually one of my lessons given this semester. Thank you for sharing!

Thank you so much for posting this! I am currently taking ITEC 7455 where I have to teach digital citizenship to my students. This was a great post! Thank you!

Thank you for all the information. Very important to know about copyright and the myths that can make us confused about it.

Thank you for this information! This is definitely useful as teachers and students create documents or presentations.

This is great, and this will actually help a lot of people in their real life!

Welcome to my blog! It would be very difficult to image education without technology. As the pace of technology continue, we will find it more and more difficult to keep our students as unique leaders in a highly digital, web-based environment. That is our first challenge.

E’ una bellissima guida. Peccato che non ci sia in italiano, perchè i miei studenti ( di scuola elementare) non hanno un livello di inglese che permetta a loro di capire le slide. Spero che riuscirete a tradurla in diverse lingue.

When you allow a copy of your Google Slides presentation to be copied, does that mean you give permission for it to be used on a website if full attribution is given? What about a closed teaching platform, like Schoology. When you copy the slides you create a new link online and you are literally copying the work. So, it is a little confusing as to what permission is given.

You are so right Shannon, copyright is a complex topic. The key takeaway from this is that when in doubt about using content, ask the creator for permission, find a free alternative, purchase an alternative, or make your own material.

Question: What if you try to replicate a piece of work not by copying the original material, but by making your own version of it.

Hi, that’s a very good question! It’s important to keep in mind that representing someone else’s ideas as your own, even when rewording, could be problematic. Once you rewrite a sentence, either through paraphrase or a summary, it is important that you cite the original source. I hope that helped!

Hi, I am a school librarian. I am creating a professional development course for my teachers on copyright, and I would like to use your site and content during my PD. I just wanted to check on permission.

Hi Jennifer! As long as any content used has the necessary accreditation it will be fine. We would love to see the final product, all the best! Barry.

Thank you SO MUCH for this post and the resources! I’ve been so lost trying to navigate the world of copyright for that last two months. I wish I had come across this blog sooner.

Thank you so so much. Very helpful.

Thank you for providing this useful information about copyright laws.

What about read aloud and storytelling? There are plenty of people (most of them are teachers) reading books for kids on YouTube. Is that considered fair use?

Good question, Renata. During these extraordinary times there have been questions about read alouds and some exceptions to the rules.

If you’re in the USA, you should be covered by “fair use” as outlined by EdSurge .

Some publishers have been allowing teachers to read books to their students during school closures but I’m unsure if this is going to be an ongoing thing? Kate Messner explains here .

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the reply, Kathleen! I see people doing it everywhere and not necessarily for their students since it’s an open video on YouTube. Some of them just read the book, others do it with a twist (with an activity, a game, comments etc). I understand that the fair use is only for your students, isn’t it? Or is the twist what changes it all? Another question is what if the book and the publisher is in English (from the US), but the person’s channel is not? Just curious.

Hi Renata, I wish I knew! I really feel like it’s such a grey area at the moment. You might even need to check with the publisher of specific books as I don’t think there are blanket rules. If you do find out anything useful please let me know! 🙂

What about writing about a novel or giving a book review? I want to share the books I am reading in class with other educators, but I don’t know if uploading a photo I took of the cover and writing about it is OK.

Hi Jax, it doesn’t sound like there would be any copyright issues with sharing a photo of a book and writing a review. I’m sure you’d link to the book/author too. Enjoy!

I wrote a long comment but I think it got deleted. Short answer is: yes, it’s probably violating the publishing company or book cover artist’s copyright to use the book cover in a blog post. But they would never ever sue you because you’re doing free marketing for them. Imagine if a publishing company decided to sue every book blogger and bookstore site using the covers without permission. No one would ever review those books again and sales would tank!

Check with your Teacher-Librarian! Many Library Management Systems have the ability to store book covers. Sometimes there is an exclusion which allows libraries to use book cover images for promotion of books.

Copyright is the most important factor while using the image or graph. Just because we found it on the net does not mean that is free to use, is a point worth remembering. For that purpose images can be used from free sites or they are free for educational purposes

This post was very helpful explaining what copyright is and you really dove into all of the specific vocabulary and important things to know. It shows you really put in the time to learn about the different sorts of laws and how to avoid getting in trouble through safer resources.

You should seek permission before using copy right resources. This should be a topic taught in schools to educate the students on using copy rights resources on blogs. The information is very useful and informative to all. As individuals we must take time to read and learn more about copy right resources.

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Online Teaching Hub

Online and Blended Teaching Hub

Copyright and fair use.

Copyright refers to certain legal rights to original works. While copyright law protects the rights of authors, it also provides exceptions that allow teachers and students to use copyrighted works in the teaching and learning process. Exceptions include materials in the public domain, face-to-face teaching exemption, and fair use. Fair use allows some use of copyrighted materials for certain activities including teaching and learning. Four factors must be weighed to determine if a use of copyrighted work qualifies as fair use: the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the copyrighted material, the amount used, and the effect of the use on the market for the work. Teachers and students can avoid copyright issues by asking permission for a use, using materials in the public domain or licensed through Creative Commons, and using websites that offer freely usable materials.

Questions to Consider

• What experiences have you and your students had using copyrighted materials in the classroom?
• What aspects of copyright law can benefit teachers and students engaged in the educational process?
• How can you and your students acquire materials for the teaching and learning process that avoid copyright issues?

At-a-Glance Video

• Topic Summary
• Infographic: 3 Ways to Get Materials for Use in the Classroom

Web Resources

Copyright basics.

• Copyright crash course – University of Texas Libraries
• Copyright basics – Purdue University Copyright Office
• Strategies for fair use – Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Copyright – Distance Education and the TEACH Act
• Creativity, Copyright, and Fair Use
• Fair Use – U.S. Copyright Office
• Academic Honesty, Copyright, and Fair Use
• Plagiarism and Citations – Animated “Middle School Me’
• Understanding Copyright, Public Domain, and Fair Use

Teaching Resources

• Helping Students Learn to Cite Their Sources
• How to Teach Copyright and Fair Use to K-12 Students
• How to Teach Copyright and Fair Use to Students – Class Tech Tips
• Copyright and Creativity: K-12 Teaching Resources on Copyright and Fair Use
• Fair Use Evaluator
• How to Find Free Images and Stock Videos for Classroom Projects

Websites with Free-to-Use Resources

• Photos for Class
• Pics4Learning
• OpenClipArt

Related Online and Blended Teaching Hub Topics

• Adapting Face-to-Face Activities for Online Environments
• Creating a Teacher Website
• Information Literacy
• Learning Management Systems
• Online Curriculum Planning and Preparation
• Promoting Academic Integrity

Online and Blended Teaching Hub Tool Pages

• Image and Infographic Creation: Adobe Express , Canva
• Interactive Video/Presentation: EdPuzzle , NearPod , Prezi
• Learning Management Systems: Canvas , Google Classroom , Schoology
• Screencasting/Video Production: Loom , Screencast-O-Matic , Screencastify
• Website Platforms: Google Sites , Weebly , Wix

Powerpoint Slides on Copyright and Fair Use

Use these powerpoint slides to teach your colleagues and students about copyright and fair use. There are two versions:

"Yes You Can Use Copyrighted Materials" is appropriate for a one-hour program 

"Finally, the end to copyright confusion has arrived " is suitable for a 10-minute introduction.

Learning Objectives

In this module you will explore how you can use copyrighted materials using the fair use doctrine. In this part of the copyright law, students and teachers (as well as other groups) have special permission to use media and other works.

I want to use a copyrighted image in a presentation, classroom, or other learning activity that doesn’t fall under the public domain or doesn’t have a creative commons license. What should I do?

Learn about fair use! Section 107 of the copyright code (i.e., fair use) allows students and teachers to use copyrighted materials without permission. There are two interpretations of fair use: (1) the four factors from the original law and (2) transformative use. This module will focus on the four factors.

Wait, what is fair use again?

Fair use  ( 17 U.S.C. §107  helps BALANCE the rights of copyright owners with copyright users. Because of fair use, certain kinds of uses are allowed, without permission or payment—in fact, even in the face of an explicit denial of permission—at any point during the copyright term. Fair use is why things like quoting a book in order to review it, or publicly displaying a reproduction of an artwork in order to critique it, are legal.

Fair use is an important part of copyright law that provides some flexibility for users and new creators. At its core, fair use ensures that there are some kinds of uses that do not require permission or payment. But there are no easy rules for fair use—if you want to take advantage of its flexibility, you have to understand its complexities!

Each possible use of an existing work must be looked at in detail and the law spells out several factors that determine whether a use is fair. No one factor is decisive – you always have to consider all of them, and some additional questions. Even after considering all relevant issues, the result is usually in impression that a particular use is “likely to be fair” or “not likely to be fair.” There are rarely definitive answers outside of courts.

Video: Watch the video for a short overview of fair use.

1. Purpose and Character of Use

This is the only factor that deals with the proposed use—all the others deal with the work being used, the source work. Purposes that favor fair use include education, scholarship, research, and news reporting, as well as criticism and commentary more generally. Non-profit purposes also favor fair use (especially when coupled with one of the other favored purposes.) Commercial or for-profit purposes weigh against fair use—which leaves for-profit educational users in a confusing spot!

2. Nature of the Original Work

One element of this factor is whether the work is published or not. It is less likely to be fair to use elements of an unpublished work—which makes sense, basically: making someone else’s work public when they chose not to is not very fair, even in the schoolyard sense. Nevertheless, it is possible for use of unpublished materials to be legally fair.

Another element of this factor is whether the work is more “factual” or more “creative”: borrowing from a factual work is more likely to be fair than borrowing from a creative work. This is related to the fact that copyright does not protect facts and data.With some types of works, this factor is relatively easy to assess: a textbook is usually more factual than a novel. For other works, it can be quite confusing: is a documentary film “factual”, or “creative”—or both?

Uses from factual sources are more likely to be fair than uses from creative ones —though not every source is easily classified!

3. Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used

Amount: this is an element that many guidelines give bad advice about. A use is usually more in favor of fair use if it uses a smaller amount of the source work, and usually more likely to weigh against fair use if it uses a larger amount. But the amount is proportional! So a quote of 250 words from a 300-word poem might be less fair than a quote of 250 words from a many-thousand-word article. Because the other factors also all come into play, sometimes you can legitimately use almost all (or even all) of a source work, and still be making a fair use. But less is always more likely to be fair.

Substantiality: this element asks, fundamentally, whether you are using something from the “heart” of the work (less fair), or whether what you are borrowing is more peripheral (and more fair). It’s fairly easily understood in some contexts: borrowing the melodic “hook” of a song is borrowing the “heart”—even if it’s a small part of the song. In many contexts, however, it can be much less clear.

4. Effect of the Use on the Potential Market

This factor is truly challenging—it asks users to become amateur economists, analyzing existing and potential future markets for a work, and predicting the effect a proposed use will have on those markets. But it can be thought of more simply: is the use in question substituting for a sale the source’s owner would otherwise make—either to the person making the proposed use, or to others? Generally speaking, where markets exist or are actually developing, courts tend to favor them quite a bit. Nevertheless, it is possible for a use to be fair even when it causes market harm.

Napster was a pioneering file sharing program where users could get music for free, but is violated copyright and this area of fair use. Watch this documentary to hear the full story!

Video: What happened to Napster? Watch the video to learn more about the landmark case of music and file sharing.

What about those educational guideline posters?

It’s tempting to try to use the categories listed in the statute (“criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching […], scholarship, or research”) as hard-and-fast rules. However, the key words in that paragraph are “for purposes such as…”—the list is illustrative, not exhaustive. There are both fair and unfair uses within those categories, and many fair uses outside of them, too.

It’s also tempting to look for guidance from sources that give hard-and-fast rules. Some ideas people have about clear-cut fair uses (“all educational uses are okay!” “the  first  time I share an article with my students, it’s always allowed”) come from agreements developed between a few players, or as a result of settlements of lawsuits. Many of these ideas are out of date—the agreements may have expired, or some of the players may have decided not to play by those rules anymore.  None of these ideas have legal force!

Another set of misleading hard-and-fast fair use  educational guidelines  come from the content industry—often developed as guidelines to assess risk internally—but then incorrectly shared, or misunderstood, as statements of law: “quoting 250 words or less is always okay”, “any video clips over 30 seconds are not fair use”. “Amount” is measured proportionately for fair use purposes, so these types of guidelines are always misleading. 25 seconds from a work that totals 35 seconds could well be unfair, and 5 minutes from a 2-hour film might be fair. Taking “substantiality” into account, even 3 seconds of the “heart” of a short video could be unfair! Hard-and-fast “amount” guidelines are not legally binding, and can lead you to think something is fair when it is not, and to think something is not fair when in fact it is!

Copyright and Fair Use for Teachers Copyright © 2019 by Larysa Nadolny is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

The Educator’s Guide to Creativity & Copyright

Jul 14, 2019

By Kerry Gallagher, J.D. , Larry Magid, Ed.D. and David Sohn, J.D.

Whether they’re working in class or at home, students are accessing, viewing, creating, and sharing media as part of their day-to-day academic experiences. All of this is made possible by near ubiquitous access to digital devices and internet in schools and homes. While teachers are conscious of plagiarism when student products are in the form of research papers, the complicated areas of copyright, fair use, and open access creative works (such as Creative Commons or public domain) are less familiar but are just as important. Now that our students are creating and remixing audio, video, text and images to “show what they know” it is essential that they are doing all of this with a clear understanding of their own rights and the rights of other creators or owners of content.

There was a time when copyright issues were only of interest to media professionals with resources, back when very few people had the capacity to create professional quality video or audio or even printed documents. Now, anyone with a computer or a smartphone has the tools to create, edit and share professional quality media. For students, this means that copyright directly affects activities they are likely to engage in on a regular basis at school, at home, and eventually in the workforce.

While copyright is a legal concept, learning about how it applies to teachers and students is important not just because of some possible – though unlikely – legal consequences. It’s about doing the right thing, establishing good habits, and ensuring that students are learning to respect the rights of other content creators. They should also understand the difference between classroom use and broader use, such as posting materials online.

Copyright isn’t just about setting limits on what students can do or use. As students engage in creative projects, copyright protections apply to their work too! And there are rich opportunities for students to draw upon and reuse the creative work of others in legal and ethical ways. Here are three examples:

• Students can reuse and remix a vast array of images, music, and videos that are specifically licensed for that purpose (sometimes with restrictions).
• They can also create with materials that are not copyrighted or whose copyright may have expired.
• For some uses, especially in the education context, students can rely on the doctrine of fair use, which permits certain reuses of copyrighted works without permission — but it’s important to understand the key factors that govern whether fair use applies.

There are many guidelines in this area, but like many areas of law and ethics, there are some gray areas too. This guide is meant to provide you with a broad understanding of copyright, clear definitions of related terms, and likely applications that you can use in your daily work in your classroom with students. Copyright is not something to fear. Remember that you should feel empowered to use and create materials when you have a right to.

Why should students learn about copyright?

In this exciting era when we are all creators and publishers, we are empowering our students to “show what they know” by making graphics, creating videos, composing music, and more. This is worthwhile and engaging academic work. But frequently, student creations may include elements (music, illustrations, etc.) which draw from someone else’s work. Then, when the assignment is complete, our students are often proud of their final products and even eager to share their work beyond the classroom. It is not unusual for students to build digital portfolios of their creations online. This can raise copyright problems. For example, if a student creates a video to show himself reciting and analyzing a copyrighted poem for English class and chooses to use a copyrighted song in the background, he can share that video with his teacher and classmates as part of his academic activities because of fair use. But if the student is especially proud of his video and decides he wants to share it beyond his English class by publishing it on his YouTube channel, he could be infringing on the copyrights of both the poem and the song.

Of course, we want our students to be free to share and even publish their creative work if they want to. That’s why it is important to preemptively teach them about how to find and use openly licensed and public domain materials. They also should learn about fair use and be aware that what fair use permits in the confines of their own classroom may differ from what would be allowed in works they intend to share publicly. When students publish their academic creations, they should know both how copyright protections apply to them and how to respect the copyright protections of the works they may have reused or remixed during the creation of their work. Terms like openly licensed, public domain, and fair use might not be familiar to all students and educators. Read on in this guide for more information about how to apply them to the classroom and to student work.

Why should educators learn about copyright?

Just like students, educators have more opportunities than ever before to take advantage of creative works and incorporate them into their instructional designs. Teachers are designing slides, flipped video lessons, infographics, and even composing parody songs to help their students learn. Therefore, educators also need to think about how they’re using copyrighted content in their own materials. They also may need to consider how their students will access these materials; sometimes how copyright applies may be different if a teacher’s creation is only used in the four walls of the classroom than if the teacher wants to make the creation available online for her students or others to access from outside the classroom. Teachers should model and explain how they are paying attention to concepts like copyright and plagiarism as part of how they design these lessons. The next section will help educators understand the difference.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

Most educators are familiar with the issue of plagiarism – the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. That’s because they teach attribution and citation as part of the research process and because teachers have experience observing these guidelines in their own academic work. Both the concepts of attribution (and plagiarism) and copyright (and copyright infringement) are meant to protect the rights of the person who authored or created a prior work, but they do this in different ways:

• Attribution is meant to give proper acknowledgement to the creator and help the reader/viewer distinguish between what parts of a work are original and which are quoted or adapted from someone else’s work. Often attribution is in the form of a bibliography or works cited. They are also included to guarantee academic integrity.
• Copyright is meant to give the creator a degree of control over their original work and how it is disseminated. In some cases, this means they may choose to require compensation or payment in order for others to use or view it.

The fundamental purpose of copyright protection is to provide incentives to writers, artists, and other creators to continue creating new pieces. Acknowledgment alone wouldn’t likely be enough incentive, so copyright often requires permission . That means that, unless usage is permitted under fair use, someone could provide proper attribution for a copyrighted creation, but still be infringing on the copyright if that person did not have the permission of the creator to use and publish the copyrighted work.

While it’s fine to be inspired by others or build on the work of others, it’s important not to take credit for other people’s work and not to violate their rights under copyright. But if you understand under what conditions it’s ok to incorporate other people’s work into your own — including when to give credit and when to seek permission — you can let the creativity of others inspire and support creativity of your own!

What does copyright cover?

We’ve already stated that the purpose of copyright is to encourage writers, artists, and other creators to produce new creative works by giving them some say over how their work is disseminated. But, which creative works are covered by copyright?

Covered by copyright:

Any original creative media – sound, image, video, or text – that is set in a tangible or digital form is covered by copyright. This means that, for example, a teacher’s original video lesson or a student’s original graphics or music compositions are protected by copyright. So are the most recent images, videos, and writing that others have created and shared both online and offline.

Not covered by copyright:

• Facts are not covered by copyright because they are not creative works.
• Ideas are not covered by copyright. The specific words or images an author uses may be protected by copyright, but not the underlying ideas the author’s work communicates.
• United States government documents are not covered by copyright.
• Non-creative lists, such as a directory of phone numbers or a grocery list of ingredients, are not covered by copyright.
• Some creative works are sufficiently old that their copyright has expired (see below).

When do copyright protections apply? When do they expire?

It is important to remember that copyright protections apply to an original creative work instantly and automatically as soon as the work is set in tangible or digital form. This means that as soon as a song is written or recorded, a painting is created, or an article is written, copyright protections apply to them. No formal registration is necessary (although there is a U.S. Copyright Office and there are some advantages to registering your copyright there). Nor is it necessary to put a © on your work, though doing so may remind others of your copyright.

It’s also worth noting that copyright protections do not last forever – eventually they expire. For example, any original creative work made before 1923 is no longer protected by copyright. For more on this, check out the Copyright Office circular on the Duration of Copyright.

What are the copyright protections?

To simplify a bit, copyright allows the writer, artist, or creator to control:

• Who may make copies of the work and under what circumstances.
• How the work may be distributed and in what forms.
• When and how the work may be displayed or performed.
• If a derivative work (like a spinoff or a translation) may be made using parts or all of the original creative work.

So, when teachers and students come across original creative works – online or in print – and want to copy them, distribute them, show or perform them, or incorporate them into their own work, they need to be aware of copyright. In general, these kinds of activities may require a grant of permission or license from the copyright holder. For many educational uses, however, it may be OK for teachers and students to engage in these activities without the copyright holder’s permission due to a part of copyright called fair use.

When can educators and students take advantage of “fair use” of copyrighted material?

Fair use is an important part of copyright that allows people to copy or re-use a copyrighted work without the creator’s permission in limited ways that are still fair to the creator.

Copyright generally requires you to get permission before you copy, distribute, or re-use someone else’s copyrighted work. But sometimes, permission isn’t needed because what you want to do qualifies as fair use.

Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted work without permission for purposes such as news reporting, commentary, education, parody, and the creation of new works that use someone else’s creative work in entirely new ways.

There are examples that are familiar to educators: Imagine if copyright law prevented students from using quotations from literature or research articles in their essays. Fortunately, this kind of copying – in short lengths, and not damaging to the author – qualifies as fair use. That means it is permitted without having to get the copyright holder’s permission. Other common examples include sharing a movie excerpt as part of a movie review or recording a TV show on your home DVR so you can watch it at a later time.

Unfortunately, there is no hard-and-fast rule about what counts as fair use. Instead, fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis using a legal balancing test that weighs four key factors and can sometimes be tricky to apply. Courts consider all four factors together – no single factor can determine the outcome one way or another. Under this legal test, a use is more likely qualify as fair use if:

• You use the original for a new purpose such as commentary, news reporting, criticism, or education, or to create a new work that transforms the original by adding new expression. For example, using a whole song in a school project – an educational purpose – would generally be fair use. However, it might not qualify as fair use if the student wanted to expand the purpose by publishing the project to potentially a large online audience.
• The original you want to use is primarily informative or factual in nature, as opposed to highly creative. (But, courts often give this factor less weight than the others, so highly creative works can still be subject to fair use when other factors point that direction.)
• Where possible, you use only a small portion of the other person’s work and only as much as you need to make your point – such as a single paragraph from a much longer text or a short clip from a much longer video. In some cases, it is still fair use if you need a whole creative work, like a whole video or song, but in general the more you use the less likely it is to be fair use.
• Your use won’t be able to replace the original in the marketplace – the owner/artist would still be able to distribute their work as they choose. Put another way: buyers looking for the original would not be satisfied with accessing your work instead. If your use could undermine the creator’s ability to sell or make money from the work, it’s less likely to be fair use.

In the education setting, it will generally be fair use when students reuse portions of someone else’s work in a school project, such as using images or songs for a presentation in class. But the fair use analysis can change if the students then posts those projects online to a potentially large audience, including on social media. The student would then have to consider the other factors, such as how much of the original they used and whether their posting of the project could hurt the market for the original.

What to do if it’s not fair use

If after using the balancing test it seems that fair use may not cover what a student or teacher wants to do, they could still try to obtain permission of the copyright holder. It could be as simple as writing an email to a photographer or composer. With that person’s consent, the student or teacher would be free to engage in their proposed use of the photo or music without risk of violating copyright.

If fair use does not apply and permission from the copyright holder cannot be obtained, teachers and students should look for either public domain or openly licensed creative works. It is actually good practice to use public domain or openly licensed content because students and teachers are more likely to be able to publish their final work online without worrying about copyright infringement. Teachers and students should also think about whether they might be able to create their own content – using a camera on a smartphone, a graphic design program, or other tools – or find a fellow student to create it and give permission for use.

Which creative works fall in the public domain?

There is one category of creative work that students and educators can use without restriction and without having to obtain permission or pay any fees: public domain.

Public domain means there is no copyright or that the copyright has expired, including any content created before 1923. Any material created by the U.S. federal government is in the public domain, including most photographs and documents from federal government websites that typically end in .gov. Government websites may sometimes contain some photographs taken by people who are not government employees or reports written by private contractors – but for the most part, material posted on federal government websites is created by government employees and thus is free to use. Government sites that have useful material include the National Park Service (nps.gov), the Library of Congress (loc.gov) and NASA.gov. Teachers and students can learn more about how copyright applies to government documents at the U.S. Government Works website.

What are Creative Commons licensed works and can teachers and students use them?

Some authors, artists, and creators choose to attach an open form of a copyright license to their work. Essentially, this means they’ve granted advance permission to others to use their creative work in certain ways. The most common type of open license is Creative Commons .

Works licensed under Creative Commons can have restrictions. For example, some licenses grant permission for non-commercial use only. A no-derivatives license permits others to use the work but not to modify it or re-mix it. Other Creative Commons licenses are broader, allowing re-use with few restrictions. Before using any Creative Commons content, read the summary of the license. (Don’t worry, these are not long legal documents but simple instructions like “if you remix, transform or built upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.”) Most Creative Commons licensed works are available to use for free, but some creators charge for the initial download of the work or apply subscription fees to gain access as explained in this FAQ . And remember, fair use may give educators and students additional leeway as long as the material is used strictly within the confines of the classroom.

Search.creativecommons.org/ is a website that lets you easily search several sources for images and videos that are covered under Creative Commons licenses. Google’s Image Search also has a feature, within its Advanced section, that enables you to specify usage rights – for example, to look for images that are free to use, share, or modify.

There are other types of content licensing including so-called stock photos and clip-art. Many of these charge a fee (sometimes as little as $1 for an image on websites like canva.com) but some can be free with certain rules and restrictions.

You’ll find a directory of free and low-cost sources of content for use by students and educators at ConnectSafely.org/copyright .

Copyright protects your students’ rights

As we mentioned we’re all creators and every time any of us writes something or produces a video or audio, we’re creating a copyrighted work, even if we don’t register it with the U.S. Copyright Office or put a little © on our work. It’s automatically protected by copyright. While many students probably don’t think much about their own copyrights, it’s important to point out that the law protects them. And, these days, it’s not uncommon for teens and even younger children to earn money by posting to YouTube or Instagram. Also, in our information economy, it’s increasingly common for people in the workforce to be creators of intellectual property. So, even if your students aren’t lucky enough to earn millions on YouTube or Instagram, chances are pretty good that they will eventually be in a position to earn money by creating content either in their own business or for an employer.

Just because something may be legal doesn’t mean it’s right

There are many things in life that may be legally permissible, but perhaps unethical or in violation of academic standards. For example, breaking a promise is not necessarily illegal, but many would agree that it is unethical. When it comes to accessing, creating, and sharing creative works, there are similar concerns about both laws and ethics.

For example, if a student were writing a paper or producing a video about bullying, it might be tempting to include a picture or video of a fellow student being bullied. Assuming the student took the picture, it may be legal to use that image, but that doesn’t make it ethical. It is good etiquette to check with the person in the photo whose privacy you might be violating.

Another issue is giving credit to the source. For example, the free image sharing site unsplash.com says “You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer.” However, it goes on to say the photographers “appreciate a credit because it provides exposure to their work and encourages them to continue sharing.” So, even though you may not be legally required to credit the photographer, it’s still the right thing to do whenever possible.

Because its copyright has expired a student can legally use any work created prior to 1923, but if the student decides to include a picture of the Mona Lisa, it’s good form to credit Leonardo da Vinci and perhaps even point out that the original is hanging in the Louvre.

If someone says something in conversation that you would like to repeat later, it is likely that copyright does not apply and you would not be violating their legal rights, but it might be courteous to mention them as the source of the quotation, even if it’s something they said to you in private.

There are also credibility issues. If a student were to write a paper about the Statue of Liberty and point out that it weighs 225 tons, it wouldn’t be legally or even ethically required to cite the source for that statistic. But, since it is highly unlikely that the student would independently know that, it would add credibility and be courteous to cite the source (which happens to be libertyellisfoundation.org). And there are times when even credible sources can be wrong, so by citing a credible source, the student is at least somewhat protected should the information turn out to be incorrect.

In short, copyright should not be the sole guide to questions of permission, credit, and citation. In a variety of scenarios, considerations related to ethics, courtesy, and credibility may counsel for going beyond what copyright law would require.

Closing thoughts for educators

By now you’ve probably figured out that copyright law is somewhat nuanced and that deciding what’s allowed can be literally a bit of a balancing act. Still, there are some broad guidelines that we can turn to. If we or our students want to use content created by someone else, the right thing to do is to think carefully about whether that use is legal and ethical, and to credit the source.

Our hope is that you feel empowered to take advantage of the copyright protections that apply to your original creative works made both within and outside the scope of your work as a teacher. Be sure to make your students aware of their own copyrights and how to respect the rights of others while they are in your classroom and even when they are producing creative works outside of school.

While this guide clarifies some of the legal contours of copyright protections, it also highlights the considerable freedom that teachers and students have to use creative work in the education setting. Refer back to the guide often and share it with your students. And, by the way, this guide, while protected by copyright, is published with a Creative Commons license, so you are free to share with others. And like all works, you’re free to quote from it under fair use (with attribution of course and – if you don’t mind – a link back to ConnectSafely.org/copyright ).

Additional Resources

• Defense.gov
• The Public Domain Review
• Creative Commons
• Can Stock Photo

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• Home > What can I use? > Fair use

Fair use for teaching and research

Fair use allows reproduction and other uses of copyrighted works – without requiring permission from the copyright owner – under certain conditions. In many cases, you can use copyrighted materials for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research. 

Four factors of fair use

The fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law lists the following factors to be evaluated in determining whether a particular use of a copyrighted work is a permitted fair use: 

The fair use exception is purposefully broad and flexible. Each factor is relevant in order to determine whether a particular use is a fair use. A final determination on fair use depends on weighing and balancing all four factors against the facts of an individual situation.

Guidance on the use and limitations of fair use

Some specific guidelines about use of copyrighted material for teaching are provided elsewhere on this site . Since individual members of the UC community are usually best situated to understand the context of other uses, UC faculty, staff, and students should consider making reasoned, good faith decisions about the fair use of copyrighted works using the four factors outlined above. UC’s 2015 Policy on Copyright and Fair Use states: “In the unlikely event of a copyright infringement claim, the University will defend its employees who acted within the scope of their University employment and who made use of the copyrighted work at issue in an informed, reasonable, and good faith manner.”

If a particular use seems unlikely to be permitted under fair use, you should attempt to get permission to use the work from the copyright owner.

In evaluating the four factors of fair use, you can use the following questions to help assess your particular situation:

• Are you planning on using the work in a different way, or for a different purpose, than the original creator? In copyright terms, is your use “transformative”?

• Are you using an amount of that work that is narrowly tailored to your new purpose?

 Recent case law has shown that if your answer to both of these questions is “yes,” then fair use is likely.

• What can I use?
• In the classroom
• Online instruction
• Public domain
• Obtaining permissions

Related policies

2015 Policy on Copyright and Fair Use

1985 Policy for Off-Air Recording of Broadcast Programming for Educational Purposes

Fair use resources

Fair Use for Nonfiction Authors from the Authors' Alliance

Fair Use Evaluator from the American Library Association

• Faculty & Staff

Guidelines for Fair Use in Education

Academic librarians, including those at the University of Washington, recommend considering the four factors of Fair Use when advising on how to incorporate copyright protected materials into the classroom, whether live or virtual.

The UW Library’s guidance on Fair Use includes self-check and evaluation tools to help you think about fair use in your particular situation.

Fair Use analyses apply to books and periodicals, music, images, and multimedia. Please note, however, that uses of materials accessed through licensed databases and streaming services are governed by contractual agreements, which may have terms that are stricter than U.S. copyright law.

The TEACH Act gives detailed guidance for non-infringing uses of materials in distance education. Yet because of the law’s strict requirements, practitioners stress fair use, which is more flexible.

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Copyright Best Practices for Teaching and Learning

As an educator, how often do you think about copyright?

Consider these questions:

Have you ever avoided sharing useful and interesting material in your course because you were concerned about violating copyright? Gotten confused navigating what constitutes "fair use" of an image, video, written work, or quote? Or perhaps you learned after the fact that you actually shouldn’t have shared a particular work with your students? Oops...

Don't stress—you’re not alone. Copyright laws are complex and can be frustrating for many instructors to navigate. 

From understanding fair use to using public domain, Creative Commons, and licensed works, this guide provides helpful resources and advice so you can confidently share copyrighted materials in both your in-person and online classes.

Copyright basics 

Copyright is a bundle of rights that protect original works of authorship. It includes the right to reproduce, create derivatives, distribute, publish, perform, and display a work . Copyright was established in the U.S. Constitution to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts" (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8) by giving authors control over their works for a limited time.  Along with the exclusive rights given to authors, specific exemptions, such as fair use, were written into the law for creating, using, and sharing copyrighted works.  

Copyright protection is automatic. Once a work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression—so as soon as it’s written in an email, captured on film, saved to a computer, and so on—it is protected by copyright. Copyright protects most creative expression including literary, musical, and dramatic works, as well as sculptures, sound recordings, motion pictures, computer programs, architectural works, and more.  

Why should you care about copyright?

On the surface, it might seem like an unnecessary roadblock for instructors and students, but copyright plays an important role in education. Copyright helps authors and scholars monetize their work. It gives creators the ability to protect their work from unlicensed or unauthroized use and provides an incentive for intellectual creativity. And, for you as an instructor, a strong understanding of copyright will open doors for you to enliven your teaching with meaningful new course material .

If you're hitting copyright roadblocks, there are many resources and exceptions to continue your teaching and learning efforts in the classroom and online. These resources explored below include open works such as public domain and Creative Commons materials, and limited statutory exemptions for in-person and online teaching (§ 110(1)-(2)) and fair use (§ 107). 

Additional resources  

For a more extensive refresher of copyright basics, see the Copyright Basics and Fair Use  sections of  Choosing & Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research or the  Copyright in CarmenCanvas guide . 

Public domain

The public domain consists of works that were never or are no longer protected by copyright. Copyright protection has a set duration so copyright can expire , or never exist in the first place, in the case of ideas, facts, and discoveries. Public domain works are generally free to use in any way because copyright no longer applies and permission from the copyright holder is unnecessary. The public domain supports creativity and allows people to build off the prior work or knowledge of others, which makes these works ideal for teaching. Standards for academic integrity  and plagiarism still apply when you use public domain works, so it is a best practice to use a citation whenever using someone else’s work.  

There are a vast array of works in the public domain to support or supplement your teaching . Not everything in the public domain is old or already known. For example, works created by U.S. Federal Government employees in the scope of their employment are considered public domain. It is important to verify the public domain status of a work and use your best judgment when linking or sharing works. Copyright laws vary by country, so something in the public domain in the United States may not be in the public domain elsewhere, and vice versa.  

Learn more about locating works in the public domain and openly licensed materials .  

An instructor is looking to share resources on infectious diseases. They want to create an activity that helps future health care professionals practice identifying symptoms in at-risk populations. Using materials from the Center for Disease Control, they create a branching activity that walks students through the process of recognizing and diagnosing flu symptoms in at-risk individuals and charting a care plan for different scenarios.

An instructor is transforming their Introduction to Philosophy class to an online course. One of their favorite components of their in-person class is the robust discussions and in-depth textual analysis. These texts can be complex and intimidating for students. An instructional designer colleague recommends social annotation assignments to allow students to comment, critique, and ask questions about the readings. They find online versions of Plato’s and Socrates’ writing to upload to the web annotation tool, which is possible since these works are in the public domain.  

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) works fall in the spectrum between all rights reserved and public domain . These works are protected by copyright, but creators choose licenses that tell users when and how they can use the work.

There are six primary Creative Commons licenses that can be used in different combinations. All CC licenses require attribution and there are specific elements to include in the attribution statement, such as the author, title, source and license. Most attribution statements follow the same patterns as academic citations. Attribution is a license term—without providing an attribution statement, the permissions and terms of the license don’t apply. Creative Commons licenses require that attribution be made in a reasonable manner, so there are no hard rules on where you place the attribution statement or in what order you list the elements.  

Creative Commons works are well suited for both teaching and research. For example, Creative Commons is a great resource for adding stock or decorative images to your courses or scholarly presentations. Many open access articles and open educational resources are also licensed using Creative Commons. Learn more about how to use Creative Commons licenses in A Simple Guide to Creative Commons.

An instructor is looking to add more creativity to their class. For a unit on social psychology, they want students to explain their research questions using videos posted to a Carmen discussion board. They introduce a brief lesson on copyright and Creative Commons to show students how to use works appropriately and what rights they have as student creators. For the video assignment, they require students to use only public domain or Creative Commons works. They link to the Creative Commons search interface and resources on Creative Commons images, music, and audio. They also link to information on Creative Commons to show students how to openly license their videos if they choose to do so. 

An instructor is teaching an advanced mathematics course. The course is set in a sequence and the instructor finds that many students are forgetting key concepts learned in a prerequisite course. The instructor wants to add a brief unit reviewing those concepts to set up a better foundation for their course, but they do not want students to have to buy any additional materials. They find a textbook on the Open Textbook Library so students can review and practice earlier concepts. Because the textbook is openly licensed, they also reformat the practice problems from the textbook into a Carmen quiz so students can demonstrate their knowledge. 

Library licensed works 

University Libraries has license agreements in place for various types of resources, including ebooks, journal articles, streaming video , and more. If the course materials are already available to students electronically, connect with a subject librarian . Most electronic resources through the library allow materials to be linked directly within a Carmen course.

Access to library resources is managed by IP (network) address so that access is seamless when a user is on campus. When off campus, users must sign in through the proxy server to access resources. This makes it a little more complex to provide URLs that work from both on and off campus, especially when using database resources. 

Sharing these resources is easiest with the permalink or permanent link , which are stable links to resources in the library’s collections. Using these permalink or permanent links reduces the chances of broken links in your course and provides easier access to library resources for students. By adding the Ohio State proxy server string to a permalink , your off-campus students will be able to easily authenticate and be able to access the library resources without having to navigate to the resource on their own. Those links are also helpful for the Libraries to better understand what resources are being used.

For more information on locating permalinks and adding the proxy string to a URL, see  Linking to Library Licensed Resources .  

A nursing instructor is redesigning their course and realizes the textbook they have been using for years is no longer meeting their needs. They are also looking to create a more affordable course for students. They connect with their subject librarian and replace the textbook with journal articles and resources available from University Libraries. Using permalinks, they embed the resources directly into Carmen, so students know what articles and chapters to read. The subject librarian also found videos from the library’s streaming video databases that they were able to embedd directly into the course. 

In their journalism course, an instructor wants to assign current event reflections on a biweekly basis. Every other week students must find a current article or news piece and critique it based on concepts learned in that week’s lesson. Using library databases , the instructor links to popular sources such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Nexis Uni, and The Wall Street Journal so students can find articles for free and share them in discussion boards. 

Educational exemptions  

Educational use has a specific exemption carved out in the law. Sections 110(1) and 110(2) of the United States Code cover the performance and display of copyrighted works in face-to-face and online classrooms. Section 110(1) applies to physical classrooms or classroom-like environments and gives instructors clear space to perform or display any works, but only covers nonprofit educational institutions for in-person teaching activities.  

Section 110(2), also known as the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act, covers teaching in online and distance environments.  Because teaching online allows for broader dissemination of works, copyright use is more restricted for online courses. The TEACH Act enables exceptions for the digital transmission of copyrighted materials by accredited, nonprofit educational institutions. To comply with TEACH, the law requires academic institutions to meet specific criteria for copyright compliance and education. As an instructor, you must also follow a set of guidelines that mediate the performance and display of material.  

These educational exemptions  only cover performance and display of work  such as a sound recording of a poem, displaying images in a PowerPoint, or sharing a legally acquired film clip. They do not cover   the reproduction or distribution of works like PDFs, textbooks, or readings.

If your use case does not meet the requirements of the TEACH Act (§ 110(2)) or face-to-face classroom performance or display (§ 110(1)), it may be possible to still rely on fair use, which is explained below.

Copyright in CarmenCanvas 

Review the Copyright in CarmenCanvas course for best practices on using and sharing content within your Carmen course. You must be logged in to Carmen  to view the course.  

An English instructor wants to compare the 1853 memoir "12 Years a Slave" with the 2013 film of the same title. They have students read the text and set aside an entire class period to discuss it. After the discussion, the instructor wants to show clips from the film. The text is in the public domain, but the film is still protected by copyright. Since this is a unit they teach multiple times a year, the instructor owns a DVD copy they purchased. Using the technology available in Denney Hall, the instructor shows clips from the film to continue the discussion on the material. Because this is an in-person class, with a legally acquired DVD copy, the instructor can display clips from the film to students under Section 110(1).  

An art history instructor wants to give a lecture on the influence of Van Gogh on modern artists. Many of Van Gogh’s works are in the public domain, but modern works are likely protected by copyright. To share this with the class, the instructor makes a PowerPoint with images from Van Gogh and various modern artworks. The PowerPoint is only made available in Carmen to enrolled students, and the instructor reminds students to not share or download course content beyond their own individual study needs. If the amount is comparable to a live classroom session, the TEACH Act permits the instructor to share images of modern art in a PowerPoint for their online class. 

Fair use  

Fair use is a critically important exemption in education. It is relied on in so many different situations, from something as simple as a quote in a paper to support an argument, to a sketch comedy skit performed on live TV.  

Unlike other exemptions in the law that can be very specific and explicitly identify the conditions for their application, a fair use analysis works by balancing four factors: purpose, nature, amount, and market effect. You evaluate these four factors on a case-by-case basis for each work and each use case to determine if it is "fair."

Compared to other statutory exemptions (like TEACH), fair use is relatively flexible and can be applied to new technologies or teaching methods. Fair use of a work is not considered an infringement, but only a court of law can officially determine fair use.

There are steps and best practices to follow to determine fair use and strengthen your fair use argument. Carefully consider each factor described below.

Purpose 

The first fair use factor asks you to consider the purpose of the use . The law outlines some illustrative examples such as commentary, criticism, news, parody, teaching, research, and scholarship. A critical component of this factor is also considering transformation or the degree to which the copyrighted work has been changed or given a new meaning, message, or purpose.

Transformative uses help to support your fair use argument. For example, if a work was originally intended to be used for entertainment but you are now using it as a teaching tool with commentary and criticism, that may be a transformative use. On the flip side, scanning and uploading a printed textbook to Carmen so students can access it electronically does not likely qualify as a transformative use—the purpose is educational in both forms and has not changed.  

Nature 

The second fair use factor to consider is the nature of the copyrighted work . Highly creative works, such as fiction books, music, and films, are closer to the core intent of copyright protection. Using these creative works may weigh against your fair use argument as compared to works that present as more factual, such as textbooks and research articles. Courts also tend to be more protective of works that are not yet published, so sharing unpublished material may weigh against fair use, too. 

Amount 

The third fair use factor to consider is the amount and substantiality of the portion used . This factor encourages you to consider how much of a given work is needed to achieve your purpose, as well as whether you are using the “heart of the work.” The “heart of the work” is the portion of the work that is likely to hold the most value. Using the “heart of the work” can weigh against fair use.  

The amount of a work you use should be reasonable for your teaching purpose. In some cases that may be an entire work, as when you need to display an entire image to effectively teach a concept. In contrast, consider how much of a written work is needed for students to read; for example, just a portion or chapter of a book may achieve your outcome. If students only need access to certain sections, scanning and uploading the entire book would weigh strongly against fair use.

Effect 

The fourth and final factor to consider is the effect the use will have on the market for the original work . If your use substitutes for the original work, you run the risk of substantial market harm and this will weigh against a fair use argument. For example, if there is a readily available market to license or pay for a work, providing that material for free on a public site so anyone can access and download it could count as a substantial market harm.

Transformative use can also come into play when considering the fourth factor. The more transformative your use of a work, the less likely it is to cause market harm because the original and new works will occupy different markets and serve different purposes.  

Fair use checklist  

The Ohio State Health Sciences Library fair use checklist can help you think critically about your use of copyrighted works in your teaching. It lists the four fair use factors as well as uses that the court has found to either favor or oppose fair use. Use the checklist to assess the strength of your fair use argument and consider how you can transform or adjust your presentation of material to make a stronger fair use case. You might email or save the checklist to document your good faith effort in thinking about fair use.  

It's important to remember that there are no shortcuts or bright-line rules written into the law for fair use. It’s common to hear misconceptions like, "All educational use is fair use," or "Using 10% of any work is okay," but guidelines like these do not exist in the law. Indeed, not all educational uses are fair use and sometimes using a whole work or substantial part can still be fair use. The best approach is always to thoughtfully balance the four factors described above based on your specific intended use.

A social work instructor finds an infographic that demonstrates the socioeconomic connections between public health and zip codes. This infographic displays the information in a way that is easy to understand and accessible for students. She decides to use this as a model and assign students to create their own infographic based on the data presented in the published research. She downloads a copy of the infographic and shares it with students in Carmen to go over assets of the infographic that work well and showcase the creator’s design choices. She provides a citation and link to the original work. After reviewing the fair use checklist , the instructor believes the use of the infographic to teach concepts of information organization and graphic design favor fair use.  

A new economics instructor disagrees with the high price of textbooks, but their college requires them to assign a textbook for their course. To protest these costs and save students money, they scan and upload five chapters of the textbook to Carmen. They think because it is educational and behind Carmen authentication, no one will ever know. But if the instructor were to look at the fair use checklist , they would discover this is likely not fair use. Although access is limited to enrolled students and the purpose is educational, the amount used and market effect lean heavily against fair use—arguably, the scans negatively impact the market for the textbook.

Permissions  

If your use of a copyrighted work doesn’t fall under one of the educational exemptions or fair use, getting permission from the copyright owner is the next step. The first part of this process is to identify the copyright owner—often, but not always, the author or creator. Note that copyright can be transferred to another owner, and it can also be held by an employer or commissioning part, known as work made for hire . Sometimes a work may have multiple authors or separate rights to different underlying works. Identifying the copyright owner(s) can also differ depending on the industry or format.

After you identify the copyright owner, the next step in the process is to identify what rights are needed. Remember that copyright is a bundle of rights that includes rights to reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public display, and public performance. Asking for the appropriate rights may be crucial to securing permission. It can be a balancing act to consider the rights of creators and users, and it may require negotiation and payment. The most important thing when securing permission from a copyright owner is to get it in writing. Even an email can be okay if it thoroughly addresses the exceptions of all the parties. 

There are also  templates available through Copyright Services that may be used to help you draft your permissions requests. 

An engineering instructor is teaching a unit on material design. Their colleague from another university is authoring a book on this topic that has some practical application the instructor would like to incorporate into their course. The instructor knows the colleague’s book has been written but will not be published until next fall. The instructor reaches out to the colleague to see if they could use a chapter of the book in advance of publication. The colleague checks their publishing agreement, which allows them to share preprint copies of the work at their discretion. The colleague gives the instructor written permission to use the unpublished chapter for next semester until the book is published and a library copy is available.

Being informed about copyright and following best practices can empower you to enliven your course with a range of new material.  

• Copyright is automatic and helps to balance the needs of users and creators
• Public domain and openly licensed works, such as through Creative Commons, are great resources to incorporate into your teaching 
• Educational exemptions in the law exist but require specific circumstances with strict guidelines 
• Fair use is always an option; make sure you have a strong fair use argument by balancing four factors: purpose, nature, amount, and effect and use the fair use checklist to guide your analysis
• Permission from a copyright owner can be secured when you don't have an educational exemption or fair use, but it may require negotiation or payment  

For further assistance with matters pertaining to copyright law, fair use, and permissions, contact Copyright Services at  [email protected] .

• University Libraries Copyright Services (website)
• Fair Use Checklist (website)
• Permissions templates, licensing, and release forms (templates)
• Copyright and eLearning guide (PDF)
• Plagiarism and Copyright (PDF)
• Copyrighted Content in Carmen (TLRC article)

Related Teaching Topics

A positive approach to academic integrity, strategies and tools for academic integrity in online environments, related toolsets, carmencanvas, secured media library, search for resources.

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Copyright & The Classroom: Using Copyrighted Material In Classrooms and Distance Learning

There are many situations, particularly in a classroom environment, where you might want to use copyright-protected material but you can’t obtain permission from the copyright holder. A common example would be a teacher who wants to read a poem from a book or show an educational cartoon to her class. Thankfully, copyright law addresses these particular types of uses directly, in 17 U.S.C. § 110. Section 110 provides important exemptions for certain performances and displays of copyrighted works in the classroom (and certain limited online learning situations) that would otherwise be considered infringement.

The most important thing to understand about these exemptions is that if your use of content meets one of these exemptions, your use is unlikely to be infringing. In other words, this means that you would not need permission of the copyright holder, and you would not need to rely on “ fair use ” to be able to use the content.

Aside from certain classroom and educational uses, copyright law also allows uses of third-party materials in other situations as well through 17 U.S.C. § 110, such as a restaurant playing music or the television for its customers, religious uses of literary or musical works, or uses at certain fairs, which we will not discuss here. We have broken down our discussion of educational exemptions into individual sections including:

• In-person classroom performance and display
• Distance learning or transmitted educational activities
• The Copyright Advisory Network's Tool

In-person Classroom Performance and Display

This exemption allows teachers or students to perform or display copyrighted works in the classroom during face-to-face teaching activities. This means that a teacher could show pictures, read stories or articles, and show video clips to their students during class to enhance their educational experience. For physical classroom use, it doesn’t matter what kind of work it is (like if it’s dramatic, nondramatic, or musical); any type of work can be used.

But, there are three major limitations to this exemption:

(1) The performance or display must take place during the face-to-face teaching activities of a non-profit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to teaching (“non-profit educational institution" typically would cover public schools and universities, and incorporated 501(c)3 nonprofit schools and universities, but not private for-profit schools and universities);

(2) The exemption doesn’t cover any copies you make. The exemption only covers performance and display, so any copies you make will need to be allowed by fair use or another exception under the law; and

(3) You must use a lawful copy of the motion picture or audiovisual work you plan to use (either licensed or allowed under fair use). If you are performing a motion picture or audiovisual work, or even displaying single frames of those works, using an unlawful copy of that work will be considered copyright infringement if you knew or had some reason to believe that the copy was unlawful. In other words, if you have even the smallest suspicion that the copy of the film or clip you want to show to your students might be bootlegged or otherwise obtained, made, or copied without the permission of the copyright owner, this exemption will not apply to your use, and using it could mean liability for copyright infringement.

Remember that the exception only covers performance and display of works in the classroom, not any copies or adaptations. So, if you make a copy of a photo for classroom use, that copy has to be separately allowed either under fair use or even by permission of the copyright holder.

The “classroom” means a place used for instructional activities and where the audience is limited to members of the particular class. For example, a performance in the auditorium during a school wide assembly would not be considered exempted because there would presumably be students present from different classes. So, if the first graders are watching the same performance as the fourth graders and the sixth graders, the performance would fall outside the scope of the exemption, and would be probably be considered infringing.

But keep in mind that you could include studios, gymnasiums, auditoriums, libraries, and other similar places if they are used like a classroom for instructional activities. Compare this example to the earlier school-wide assembly: once a month the first-grade class goes to the library for their literature class. The students take turns reading from a short book aloud, and the teacher teaches an accompanying lesson about the themes of that particular book during that time in the library. Since this instructor is using the performance of the book as part of her lessons, and she is using the library as a place to teach her students, this particular use of the short book is likely to be exempted from infringement.

Distance Learning or Transmitted Educational Activities

This exemption is similar to the classroom use exemption, but specifically covers distance learning, or any classes that are transmitted (digitally or otherwise) outside of a physical classroom. It is intended to be used in situations very analogous to the in-person classroom setting, and is in fact narrower than the in-person exemption discussed above in a number of ways. If you want to use a work in an online class, read this section carefully and make sure you comply with each aspect of the distance learning exemption.

This exemption allows for the transmission of a performance or display of a non-dramatic work (which means works not found in an opera, musical, or other theater work) literary work, musical work, or “reasonable or limited portions” of other works. It also allows for the transmission of a display of works as long as you use an amount comparable to what would typically be shown in the live classroom session.

The following requirements must be met in order for the use to be considered non-infringing:

• Similar to the previous section, the work must be used by the instructor as an integral part of the class session as a part of the curriculum offered by a government body or an accredited non-profit educational institution. Typically, this would cover public schools and universities, and incorporated 501(c)3 nonprofit schools and universities, but not private for-profit schools and universities. Note the additional requirement that the institution be accredited. Accredited is defined as follows:
• For post-secondary education – must be accredited by a regional or national accrediting agency recognized by the Council on Higher Education Accreditation or the United States Department of Education; and
• For elementary or secondary education – must be accredited by the applicable state certification or licensing procedures.

(2) The performance or display must be directly related and “of material assistance” to the teaching content of the transmission. This means that the performance or display must be important and related to the particular lesson you are teaching.

(3) The transmission of the class must only be made for and shared with the students officially enrolled in the class.

(4) The transmitting body (the school or other educational institution) must have policies on and work to promote compliance with copyright law.

(5) If the information is transmitted digitally (and most things are these days because they involve transmission through the internet), there is an additional requirement that the institution apply technological measures that reasonably prevent someone from retaining an accessible form of the copyrighted work for longer than the class session and prevent students or other members of the audience from sharing it with those not in the course.

Remember that this exemption only covers performance and display of works, not any copies or adaptations. So, if you make a copy of a photo that is then displayed, that initial copy has to be separately allowed either under fair use or even by permission of the copyright holder.

The material being used cannot be produced or marketed specifically as part of curriculum material and not unlike the above exemption, if you use a copy of a motion picture, using an unlawful copy of that film will be considered copyright infringement if you knew or had some reason to believe that the copy was unlawful.

The Copyright Advisory Network has created a tool to help understand these first two exemptions, which can be found here.

It can be difficult to navigate which uses of copyrighted content is allowed, and which are not. Don’t forget to check out our interactive educational tool, the Fair Use App , which includes a section on the classroom uses and other exemptions.

If you have questions about the exemptions of certain performances and displays from copyright infringement liability, please contact New Media Rights .

Copyright Advisory Network Tool

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The educator's guide to copyright and fair use, a five-part series.

When it comes to copyright law and the application of fair use exceptions, ignorance is definitely not bliss! Learn how to educate yourselves and your students and avoid making a costly mistake!

You really did plan to find time over the summer to familiarize yourself with the latest information on copyright law. You absolutely intended to look up the fair use guidelines for using technology resources. You truly meant to create a classroom copyright policy, locate agencies that grant permissions to use copyrighted materials, write a template for a permission request form, and locate sites to teach students about the value of original work and the societal benefits of obeying copyright laws. You just had a few other things to do.

So now you have a student who wants to include audio of a Beatles song in a multimedia presentation about the 1960s, another who wants to include the poem "Casey at the Bat" in a report on the World Series, and a third who wants to post photographs of Biden and Obama to the class Web site.

What's an educator to do? Read Education World's five-part series on copyright, fair use, and new technologies, that's what! We did the work so you wouldn't have to!

Click Part 1: Copyrights and Copying Wrongs below to begin.

EDUCATION WORLD'S COPYRIGHT SERIES

RELATED ARTICLES FROM EDUCATION WORLD Who Said That? How to Cite Electronic Resources Article by Linda Starr Education World® Copyright © Education World EW Lesson Plans EW Professional Development Ew worksheets. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter and receive top education news, lesson ideas, teaching tips and more! No thanks, I don't need to stay current on what works in education! COPYRIGHT 1996-2016 BY EDUCATION WORLD, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT 1996 - 2024 BY EDUCATION WORLD, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SchoolNotes.com The Educator's Network Our Mission Teachers Should Know Copyright From Wrong Know what you can—and can’t—download for the classroom. As tech-savvy teachers integrate more multimedia work into their classrooms, they also face a thorny question: Who owns the visual, audio, and moving images they download and pop into their presentations? Get the answer wrong, and you may get dinged with a hefty fine. “I don’t think most teachers willingly ignore copyright issues,” says David Ensign, a professor of law at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. “But I do think many have the impression that any use of material in education is fair use.” Fair use is a component of U.S. copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without obtaining written permission, purchasing the work, or paying the creator a royalty. Typically, fair use provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author’s work, and applies when they are used for such applications as scholarship or review. It’s a concept with increasing importance in the modern classroom. Students weaned on tech are demanding more in terms of riveting class material. Consequently, teachers are scouring online sources looking for video and audio clips they can add to presentations—anything to capture and hold their students’ attention. Seems simple, but there’s a catch. “Fair use in the educational setting is defined more broadly but does not encompass all uses,” warns Ensign. Fair use in the classroom is often dependent on the subject matter of the content. Ensign says a teacher may not be allowed to show the film The Lion King to the class simply because it was raining and the kids were squirrelly. It could be shown only if the class was doing a study of Disney films or was engaged in the study of a related subject. Ensign recommends that every school and school district create and enforce a copyright usage policy that is very clear about what is allowable for classroom use. One easy out: linking. Ensign says he doesn’t paste copyrighted material into his lessons and course plans—he links to it. Commenting on a quoted passage, as blogs do, is also fair use. Yet another approach is provided by Smart Technologies, a company that has teamed up with Cambridge University Press to offer the Global Grid for Learning , which consists of more than a million pieces of copyright-cleared digital information. These include images, video clips, audio files, text documents, and learning objects ready for teachers to incorporate into their lessons. Before dismissing these options, educators should realize that failure to honor copyrights can cost them personally. “Teachers and librarians don’t realize that although they’re acting on behalf of the school and are not benefiting personally,” Ensign warns, “it doesn’t mean they’re not personally liable.” Published By Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center Educational uses of non-coursepack materials. Unlike academic coursepacks, other copyrighted materials can be used without permission in certain educational circumstances under copyright law or as a fair use. “Fair use” is the right to use portions of copyrighted materials without permission for purposes of education, commentary, or parody. Special fair use rules for educational purposes are discussed in this section. Fair use rules for educational uses are very specific and, if complied with, can generally prevent lawsuits—which is not the case for general fair use principles. Ignore Heading – Content Educational fair use guidelines. Publishers and the academic community have established a set of educa­tional fair use guidelines to provide “greater certainty and protection” for teachers. While the guidelines are not part of the federal Copyright Act, they are recognized by courts and the Copyright Office as minimum standards for fair use in education. A teacher or pupil following the guidelines can feel comfortable that a use falling within these guidelines is a permissible fair use and not an infringement. The educational use guidelines can be found in Circular 21, provided by the Copyright Office. Keep in mind that none of these guidelines permit creation of coursepacks. They only allow uses that involve copying much less material than in a coursepack. This section answers some basic questions about these guidelines. Coursepack Permission Agreement (“Licensor”) Department: School Name: Course name and number: (“the Course”). Date when Course starts: (the “Course date”). Authorization Licensor authorizes User to photocopy the Selection, as defined below, for purposes of creating a photocopy anthology (the “Coursepack”) for sale or distribution to students and academic customers in the Course. Number of Copies & Assembly copies of the Coursepack shall be assembled and distributed for the Course: by on-campus bookstores or copy centers, or by off-campus copy shops. Number of pages (or actual page numbers) to be used . The permission granted in this Agreement is limited to the Course and institution listed above and to be used for one semester only. Any further rights must be negotiated separately. Material for Which Permission Is Sought Title of text or artwork: (the “Selection”). Source publication (or product from which it came) : If from a periodical, the ISSN, volume, issue, and date. If from a book, the ISBN: . If from the Internet, the entire URL address: A standard credit line including Licensor’s name will appear where the Selection is used. If you have a special credit line you would prefer, indicate it here: . User shall pay a fee of $ _____________________ to Licensor at the following address: within 30 days of commencement date, listed above. Licensor warrants that it is the owner of rights for the Selection and has the right to grant the permission to republish the materials as specified above. (User signature) Permission Granted By: (Licensor signature) What Is the Difference Between the Guidelines and General Fair Use Principles? The educational guidelines are similar to a treaty that has been adopted by copyright owners and academics. Under this arrangement, copyright owners will permit uses that are outlined in the guidelines. In other fair use situations, the only way to prove that a use is permitted is to submit the matter to court or arbitration. In other words, in order to avoid lawsuits, the various parties have agreed on what is permissible for educational uses, codified in these guidelines. What Is an “Educational Use”? The educational fair use guidelines apply to material used in educational institutions and for educational purposes. Examples of “educational institutions” include K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Libraries, museums, hospitals, and other nonprofit institutions also are considered educational institutions under most educational fair use guidelines when they engage in nonprofit instructional, research, or scholarly activities for educational purposes. “Educational purposes” are: noncommercial instruction or curriculum-based teaching by educators to students at nonprofit educational institutions planned noncommercial study or investigation directed toward making a contribution to a field of knowledge, or presentation of research findings at noncommercial peer conferences, workshops, or seminars. Rules for Reproducing Text Materials for Use in Class The guidelines permit a teacher to make one copy of any of the following: a chapter from a book; an article from a periodical or newspaper; a short story, short essay, or short poem; a chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, periodical, or newspaper. Teachers may photocopy articles to hand out in class, but the guidelines impose restrictions. Classroom copying cannot be used to replace texts or workbooks used in the classroom. Pupils cannot be charged more than the actual cost of photocopying. The number of copies cannot exceed more than one copy per pupil. And a notice of copyright must be affixed to each copy. Examples of what can be copied and distributed in class include: a complete poem if less than 250 words or an excerpt of not more than 250 words from a longer poem a complete article, story, or essay if less than 2,500 words or an excerpt from any prose work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less; or one chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon, or picture per book or per periodical issue. Not more than one short poem, article, story, essay, or two excerpts may be copied from the same author, nor more than three from the same collective work or periodical volume (for example, a magazine or newspaper) during one class term. As a general rule, a teacher has more freedom to copy from newspapers or other periodicals if the copying is related to current events. The idea to make the copies must come from the teacher, not from school administrators or other higher authority. Only nine instances of such copying for one course during one school term are permitted. In addition, the idea to make copies and their actual classroom use must be so close together in time that it would be unreasonable to expect a timely reply to a permission request. For example, the instructor finds a newsweekly article on capital punishment two days before presenting a lecture on the subject. Teachers may not photocopy workbooks, texts, standardized tests, or other materials that were created for educational use. The guidelines were not intended to allow teachers to usurp the profits of educational publishers. In other words, educational publishers do not consider it a fair use if the copying provides replacements or substitutes for the purchase of books, reprints, periodicals, tests, workbooks, anthologies, compilations, or collective works. Rules for Reproducing Music A music instructor can make copies of excerpts of sheet music or other printed works, provided that the excerpts do not constitute a “performable unit,” such as a whole song, section, movement, or aria. In no case can more than 10% of the whole work be copied and the number of copies may not exceed one copy per pupil. Printed copies that have been purchased may be edited or simplified provided that the fundamental character of the work is not distorted or the lyrics altered (or added to). A student may make a single recording of a performance of copyrighted music for evaluation or rehearsal purposes, and the educational institution or individual teacher may keep a copy. In addition, a single copy of a sound recording owned by an educational institution or an individual teacher (such as a tape, disc, or cassette) of copyrighted music may be made for the purpose of constructing aural exercises or examinations, and the educational institution or individual teacher can keep a copy. Instructors may not: copy sheet music or recorded music for the purpose of creating anthologies or compilations used in class copy from works intended to be “consumable” in the course of study or teaching such as workbooks, exercises, standardized tests and answer sheets, and like material copy sheet music or recorded music for the purpose of performance, except for emergency copying to replace purchased copies which are not available for an imminent performance (provided purchased replacement copies are substituted in due course); or copy any materials without including the copyright notice which appears on the printed copy. If copyrighted sheet music is out of print (not available for sale), an educator can request permission to reproduce it from the music publisher. Information about contacting music publishers is provided in Chapter 5. A library that wants to reproduce out-of-print sheet music can use a system established by the Music Publishers Association by downloading and completing a form called the “Library Requisition for Out-of-Print Copyrighted Music” from the Association’s website at www.mpa.org/sites/mpa.org/files/library%20requisition.pdf . Rules for Recording and Showing Television Programs Nonprofit educational institutions can record television programs trans­mitted by network television and cable stations. The institution can keep the tape for 45 days, but can only use it for instructional purposes during the first ten of the 45 days. After the first ten days, the video recording can only be used for teacher evaluation purposes, to determine whether or not to include the broadcast program in the teaching curriculum. If the teacher wants to keep it within the curriculum, he or she must obtain permission from the copyright owner. The recording may be played once by each individual teacher in the course of related teaching activities in classrooms and similar places devoted to instruction (including formalized home instruction). The recorded program can be repeated once if necessary, although there are no standards for determining what is and is not necessary. After 45 days, the recording must be erased or destroyed. A video recording of a broadcast can be made only at the request of and only used by individual teachers. A television show may not be regularly recorded in anticipation of requests—for example, a teacher cannot make a standing request to record each episode of a PBS series. Only enough copies may be reproduced from each recording to meet the needs of teachers, and the recordings may not be combined to create teaching compilations. All copies of a recording must include the copyright notice on the broadcast program as recorded and (as mentioned above) must be erased or destroyed after 45 days. Comments are closed. Can I Use Someone Else's Work? Can Someone Else Use Mine? You can ask for it. If you know who the copyright owner is, you may contact the owner directly. If you are not certain about the ownership or have other related questions, you may wish to request that the Copyright Office conduct a search of its records or you may search yourself. See the next question for more details. We can provide you with the information available in our records. A search of registrations, renewals, and recorded transfers of ownership made before 1978 requires a manual search of our files. Upon request, our staff will search our records, see Circular 4 Copyright Office fees . There is no fee if you conduct a search in person at the Copyright Office. Copyright registrations made and documents recorded from 1978 to date are available for searching online. For further information, see Circular 22 , How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work , and Circular 23 , Copyright Card Catalog and the Online File . Check out the Virtual Card Catalog Proof of Concept as well. The Copyright Office will not honor a request for a copy of someone else's protected work without written authorization from the copyright owner or from his or her designated agent, unless the work is involved in litigation. In the latter case, a litigation statement is required. A certificate of registration for any registered work can be obtained see Circular 4 Copyright Office fees , for this and other records and services. Circular 6 , Access to and Copies of Copyright Records and Deposit , provides additional information. Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See, Fair Use Index , and Circular 21 , Reproductions of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians . Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14 , Copyright Registration for Derivative Works and Compilations . A party may seek to protect his or her copyrights against unauthorized use by filing a civil lawsuit in federal district court. If you believe that your copyright has been infringed, consult an attorney. In cases of willful infringement for profit, the U.S. Attorney may initiate a criminal investigation. If you use a copyrighted work without authorization, the owner may be entitled to bring an infringement action against you. There are circumstances under the fair use doctrine where a quote or a sample may be used without permission. However, in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained. No, we neither compile nor maintain such a list. A search of our records, however, may reveal whether a particular work is no longer under copyright protection. We will conduct a search of our records by the title of a work, an author's name, or a claimant's name. Upon request, our staff will search our records see Circular 4 Copyright Office Fees , for this and other records and services. You may also search the records in person without paying a fee. With few exceptions, the Library of Congress does not own copyright in the materials in its collections and does not grant or deny permission to use the content mounted on its website. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item from the Library’s collections and for securing any necessary permissions rests with persons desiring to use the item. To the greatest extent possible, the Library attempts to provide any known rights information about its collections. Such information can be found in the “Copyright and Other Restrictions” statements on each American Memory online collection homepage. If the image is not part of the American Memory collections, contact the Library custodial division to which the image is credited. Bibliographic records and finding aids available in each custodial division include information that may assist in assessing the copyright status. Search our catalogs through the Library's Online Catalog . To access information from the Library’s reading rooms, go to Research Centers . Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if willful infringement is proven by the copyright owner, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights. Whether or not a particular work is being made available under the authority of the copyright owner is a question of fact. But since any original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium (including a computer file) is protected by federal copyright law upon creation, in the absence of clear information to the contrary, most works may be assumed to be protected by federal copyright law. Since the files distributed over peer-to-peer networks are primarily copyrighted works, there is a risk of liability for downloading material from these networks. To avoid these risks, there are currently many "authorized" services on the Internet that allow consumers to purchase copyrighted works online, whether music, ebooks, or motion pictures. By purchasing works through authorized services, consumers can avoid the risks of infringement liability and can limit their exposure to other potential risks, e.g., viruses, unexpected material, or spyware. For more information on this issue, see the Register of Copyrights' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee . If the movie is for entertainment purposes, you need to get a clearance or license for its performance. It is not necessary to obtain permission if you show the movie in the course of “face-to-face teaching activities” in a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction, if the copy of the movie being performed is a lawful copy. 17 U.S.C. § 110(1) . This exemption encompasses instructional activities relating to a wide variety of subjects, but it does not include performances for recreation or entertainment purposes, even if there is cultural value or intellectual appeal. Questions regarding this provision of the copyright law should be made to the legal counsel of the school or school system. Photocopying shops, photography stores and other photo developing stores are often reluctant to make reproductions of old photographs for fear of violating the copyright law and being sued. These fears are not unreasonable, because copy shops have been sued for reproducing copyrighted works and have been required to pay substantial damages for infringing copyrighted works. The policy established by a shop is a business decision and risk assessment that the business is entitled to make, because the business may face liability if they reproduce a work even if they did not know the work was copyrighted. In the case of photographs, it is sometimes difficult to determine who owns the copyright and there may be little or no information about the owner on individual copies. Ownership of a “copy” of a photograph – the tangible embodiment of the “work” – is distinct from the “work” itself – the intangible intellectual property. The owner of the “work” is generally the photographer or, in certain situations, the employer of the photographer. Even if a person hires a photographer to take pictures of a wedding, for example, the photographer will own the copyright in the photographs unless the copyright in the photographs is transferred, in writing and signed by the copyright owner, to another person. The subject of the photograph generally has nothing to do with the ownership of the copyright in the photograph. If the photographer is no longer living, the rights in the photograph are determined by the photographer’s will or passed as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession. There may be situations in which the reproduction of a photograph may be a “fair use” under the copyright law. Information about fair use may be found at Fair Use Index. However, even if a person determines a use to be a “fair use” under the factors of section 107 of the Copyright Act, a copy shop or other third party need not accept the person’s assertion that the use is noninfringing. Ultimately, only a federal court can determine whether a particular use is, in fact, a fair use under the law. California teachers union drops 'BIPOC' board position after discrimination lawsuit by KRISTINA WATROBSKI | Crisis in the Classroom ELK GROVE, Calif. (CITC) — A California teachers union agreed Thursday to drop its "BIPOC" executive board position after a member filed a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit filed in late May centered around the “BIPOC At-Large” board position for the Elk Grove Education Association (EGEA). The executive role, created by the teachers union in 2023, was reserved for educators who identify as a member of a racial minority group, according to the lawsuit. History teacher Issac Newman claimed he was denied the ability to run for the position due to being White. He accused EGEA of discrimination, alleging the board position's criteria permanently damaged his "future prospects of attaining a union leadership role.” EGEA agreed Thursday to end the "BIPOC At-Large" position, as well as to demonstrate commitment to "non-discriminatory practices" in other positions, Newman's attorneys announced . A judge also entered an order requiring EGEA to pay Newman $12,000 and to pay his attorney fees. Newman told Crisis in the Classroom (CITC) Friday that while the decision is "enormous progress," he feels someone must still "hold the union to its word." The teacher said he plans to run for a new executive position "on a platform of diversity of thought, equity that fairly rewards merit, and inclusion of all employees without regard to race.” “I did everything I could to persuade my union to see the injustice of segregating teachers through this discriminatory board position, but they refused to see reason. Yet as soon as they heard from my lawyers, they backtracked, removed the racial requirement to run for election, and promised to never practice discrimination in other positions," Newman said. Some supported the EGEA board position while the lawsuit was ongoing. Lorreen Pryor, a parent in the Elk Grove Unified School District, told CBS News in June that such positions are often created due to a lack of representation and "the need for diverse voices." CITC reached out to EGEA for comment, but did not receive a response prior to publication. Have something for the Crisis in the Classroom team to investigate? Call or text the national tip line at 202-417-7273. 378 IMAGES Copyright Presentation PPT COPYRIGHT: PRESENTATION & DIGITAL Fill-in-the-Blank Words Note Taking Copyright Basics for Teachers PPT PPT VIDEO teacher's Day presentation Copyright Presentation Info 5720 7 Coding Copyright A Teachers Resource Video for copyright presentation 3 Copyright Presentation COMMENTS A Teacher's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use American copyright law originates in the U.S. Constitution and automatically protects all original, creative work in a fixed form; the moment a work is created, it is protected. Generally speaking, works created after January 1, 1978, are covered by copyright for a term equaling the life of the author plus 70 years after their death. PDF Understanding Copyright: a Handbook for Teachers copyright, that term is unenforceable (s.29(4B))Effectively, this means that, whenever someone tries to rely on a term of a contract to prevent someone else making a copy of work for the purposes of the relevant except. on, the contract term is rendered null and. void. These exceptions cannot be bargained away. An. Copyright & Creativity This curriculum walks you through what copyright protects, and what it. doesn't protect, so students understand their rights as digital citizens. Founder of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) and the Internet Education Foundation (IEF) Winner of Best Digital Tools for Teaching and Learning of 2021. The Ultimate Guide to Copyright, Creative Commons, and Fair Use for Let's begin with the 5 main rules you need to remember about copyright. 1) Just because you found it online, doesn't mean it's free to use (even if you're a teacher or student). 2) There are a lot of resources you can use freely including work that has a Creative Commons license or is in the public domain. Copyright and Fair Use Teachers and students can avoid copyright issues by asking permission for a use, using materials in the public domain or licensed through Creative Commons, and using websites that offer freely usable materials. Questions to Consider . ... Interactive Video/Presentation: EdPuzzle, NearPod, Prezi; Learning Management Systems: ... PDF The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use 10. A teacher gets clip art and music from popular file-sharing sites, then creates a lesson plan and posts it on the school Website to share with other teachers. This is permissible. Part III: Video 11. A teacher videotapes a rerun of Frontier House, the PBS reality show that profiles three modern families living as homesteaders from the 1880s ... PDF What Faculty Need to Know About Copyright for Teaching Works, created on or after January 1, 1978, are copyright protected for the life of the author plus 70 years. Works, published between 1923 and December 31, 1977, are likely copyright protected provided that the published works had proper notice of copyright. Powerpoint Slides on Copyright and Fair Use Renee Hobbs, Founder. University of Rhode Island. [email protected]. Yonty Friesem, Director. Columbia College Chicago. [email protected] Fair Use Learn about fair use! Section 107 of the copyright code (i.e., fair use) allows students and teachers to use copyrighted materials without permission. There are two interpretations of fair use: (1) the four factors from the original law and (2) transformative use. This module will focus on the four factors. How to Teach Copyright and Fair Use to Students Students often best understand the importance of copyright and fair use if you contextualize it. Celebrate them as creators who produce original work every day; emphasize that they own their work and that it is deserving of respect and protection. Start by introducing them to the vocabulary of copyright, right down to the legal language, so ... PDF Copyright, Fair Dealing, and the Classroom The Canadian Teachers' Federation, the Canadian School Boards Association, and the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), have developed and implemented guidelines to: explain what teachers may do without copyright permission; and clarify when permission is needed to use a copyright‐ The Educator's Guide to Creativity & Copyright By Kerry Gallagher, J.D., Larry Magid, Ed.D. and David Sohn, J.D. Download Printer friendly Guide (PDF) Quick-Guide for Students & Teachers (PDF) Whether they're working in class or at home, students are accessing, viewing, creating, and sharing media as part of their day-to-day academic experiences. All of this is made possible by near ... Copyright in the classroom Quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification. Parody of the content of the work. A summary of an article, with brief quotations. Reproduction of a small part of a work by a teacher or student to illustrate a lesson. Reproduction of a legislative report or judicial proceeding. Fair use for teaching and research Fair use for teaching and research. Fair use allows reproduction and other uses of copyrighted works - without requiring permission from the copyright owner - under certain conditions. In many cases, you can use copyrighted materials for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom ... Guidelines for Fair Use in Education The UW Library's guidance on Fair Use includes self-check and evaluation tools to help you think about fair use in your particular situation. Fair Use analyses apply to books and periodicals, music, images, and multimedia. Please note, however, that uses of materials accessed through licensed databases and streaming services are governed by ... PDF Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians Circular Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; Copyright Best Practices for Teaching and Learning Identifying the copyright owner(s) can also differ depending on the industry or format. After you identify the copyright owner, the next step in the process is to identify what rights are needed. Remember that copyright is a bundle of rights that includes rights to reproduction, distribution, adaptation, public display, and public performance. Copyright & The Classroom: Using Copyrighted Material In Classrooms and This exemption allows teachers or students to perform or display copyrighted works in the classroom during face-to-face teaching activities. This means that a teacher could show pictures, read stories or articles, and show video clips to their students during class to enhance their educational experience. The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use So now you have a student who wants to include audio of a Beatles song in a multimedia presentation about the 1960s, another who wants to include the poem "Casey at the Bat" in a report on the World Series, and a third who wants to post photographs of Biden and Obama to the class Web site. ... cooperates consistently with the teacher and other ... K-12 Teachers Should Know Copyright From Wrong Get the answer wrong, and you may get dinged with a hefty fine. "I don't think most teachers willingly ignore copyright issues," says David Ensign, a professor of law at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky. "But I do think many have the impression that any use of material in education is fair use.". Published By Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center Ignore Heading - Content The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education. In 2008, the Center for Media and Social Impact, in connection with American University, unveiled a guide of fair use practices for instructors in K-12 education, in higher education, in nonprofit organizations that offer programs for children and youth, and in adult education. Fair Use (FAQ) Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. California teachers union drops 'BIPOC' board position after ELK GROVE, Calif. (CITC) — A California teachers union agreed Thursday to drop its "BIPOC" executive board position after a member filed a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit filed in late May centered around the "BIPOC At-Large" board position for the Elk Grove Education Association (EGEA). The executive role, created by the teachers union in 2023, was reserved for educators who ... Judge sentences former STM teacher Jacob de la Paz for 2 counts of LAFAYETTE, La. (KADN) — A federal judge has sentenced a former St. Thomas More teacher and coach to seven years in prison for child sex crimes. Jacob de la Paz was convicted of two charges involving child pornography. He was sentenced to seven years on each count but the sentences are to run concurrently. RELATED STORIES: essay homework paper phd project resume review study thesis