Copyright Guidelines

Hi all!

For the past few semesters we have given a brief orientation to new adjunct faculty on fair use of copyrighted materials in education. The accompanying handout is reproduced below, and hopefully it will be useful for you when thinking about the materials you use, and how you use them.

Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials for Educational Purposes

Fair use explicitly allows use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Rather than listing exact limits of fair use, copyright law provides four standards for determination of the fair use exemption:

1. Purpose of use: Copying and using selected parts of copyrighted works for specific educational purposes qualifies as fair use, especially if the copies are made spontaneously, are used temporarily, and are not part of an anthology.

2. Nature of the work: Factual works, published works and scientific articles that are factual in nature are more likely to be considered available for fair use than are creative, imaginative, artistic, or unpublished works. Additionally certain "consumable" works, e.g. workbooks and standardized tests are not likely to be considered available for fair use.

3. Proportion/extent of the material used: Duplicating excerpts that are short in relation to the entire copyrighted work or segments that do not reflect the "essence" of the work is usually considered fair use.

4. The effect on marketability: If there will be no reduction in sales because of copying or distribution, the fair use exemption is likely to apply. This is the most important of the four tests for fair use.

This is all certainly a little vague. Consider the following statements in determining whether an educational use is “fair use.” The more statements that are true for your situation, the better case you have for a fair use claim.

· The use of copyright material must be presented by instructors or pupils enrolled in the specific course.

· A media performance (audio or visual) must occur in class, must be directly related to the curriculum being taught, and cannot be presented as a reward.

· Only individuals enrolled in the course can be present for a performance.

· Copyright material used must be a legally acquired copy of the work (this means items must have either been paid for by the instructor, the department, the library, or the college).

· Access to copyright materials will be terminated at the end of the class term.

· Copyright materials will only be used once, even if the lesson stays the same through multiple terms; different copyright materials will be utilized in teaching the same lesson over multiple terms.