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Professional Development: Copyright News & Information
On October 7th, a group of staff and Faculty participated in an audio conference entitled Fair use in Higher Education: Using copyrighted works in teaching presented by Lolly Gasaway. Ms Gasaway covered the following points in her presentation:
Copyright is defined as the exclusive right of the creator to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute, perform, display, sell, lend or rent their creations.
Fair Use is intended to balance the rights of copyright holders with society’s legitimate need to make copies in certain limited circumstances. Fair use lets you make a copy for you or your class for educational use with certain limitations.
Fair use applies when:
- The purpose of the use is educational
- The purpose and character of the use (is it a non-profit educational purpose?)
- The nature of the copyrighted work more factual than creative
- The amount of the work being used does not exceed 10%
- There is little impact on the future marketability of the work
Many of the differences between face-to-face and distance education teaching were resolved by the enactment of the TEACH Act (Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization) in November 2002. The TEACH act extends Fair Use provisions to Distance Education environments.
What this means to you:
- Most works, whether they are articles, films, books, audiovisual or sound recordings can be used in your face to face or online classroom.
- You should ensure that your purpose is non-profit and educational, that you are using only small portions of the work and that in your judgment you are not creating an adverse environment for the work’s potential markets.
- If you believe that you need permission to use copyrighted materials, here is a template designed to help you do that: http://landmark-project.com/permission1.php
Additional results, for further reading: