Copyright, What Educators Need to Know About Copyright, Fair Use, and Public Domain Public Domain

Can your students…. Legally use copyrighted clips from videos, CDs, or the Internet to create multimedia reports? Save these into digital portfolios or post them on a school web site?

Have you ever... Added an colorful graph or cartoon into a class PowerPoint presentation? Downloaded and/or copied a video clip to show during a classroom lesson? Created a entire unit by combining a variety of text and online resources? Posted a photograph of your students to your school eBoard that you didn’t take?

Beware…. If you answered yes to any of those questions, you're probably an excellent teacher! But, in the process of being a wonderful teacher, you might also be a violating copyright laws.

A copyrighted work may be used or copied under certain conditions Public domain  Work belonging to the public as a whole--government documents and works, works with an expired copyright or no existing protection, and works published over 75 years ago Permission  Prior approval for the proposed use by the owner Fair use  Use for educational purposes with restrictions

Fair Use Explained The 1976 Copyright Act grants the "fair use" of copyrighted materials for a variety of purposes including educational use WITH restrictions.

Fair use if: It's in a password-protected Web site where only students enrolled in the class have access to it for the duration of the class or you use it in class. Not fair use: You post it on the WWW. You have just made the cartoonist's products freely available to the entire world. A cartoonist's livelihood depends on people paying to see these in newspapers and books.

Fair Use at a Glance Audio  Teachers can copy portions of recordings for academic purposes other than performances and use them with students  The Conference on Fair Use (CONFU) multimedia guidelines suggest limiting the portion used to 10 percent and no more than 30 seconds

Fair Use at a Glance Video  You can use legally purchased videotapes and movies for instruction

Fair Use at a Glance Multimedia  Authoring for curriculum-based projects may include material from CDs, books, the Internet, and other sources and must be properly cited.  Resulting projects cannot be distributed outside the classroom community, although they can be shared with family members since students' homes are considered to be part of the learning community.

Fair Use at a Glance Internet  Taking things off the Web and using them in projects is OK, but posting them back online is not. For example: eBoard.  It is generally believed that "implied public access" permits Web site builders to include links to other sites without requesting permission.

Public Domain A public domain work is a creative work that is not protected by copyright and which may be freely used by everyone. The reasons that the work is not protected include: 1.the term of copyright for the work has expired 2.the author failed to satisfy statutory formalities to perfect the copyright or 3.the work is a work of the U.S. Government

Criteria for Public Domain Any work published on or before December 31, 1922 is now in the public domain. Works published between January 1, 1923 and December 31, 1978, inclusive, are protected for a term of 95 years from the date of publication. After It is no longer related to a date of publication, but rather runs for 70 years from the date the author dies (called, "life of the author" plus 70 years).

When in doubt, ask permission…

How to Cite Internet Resources Visit either the MLA or the APA reference books on how to cite Internet resources. You should give credit either on your eBoard or at the bottom of a handout if you have taken information off the Internet and incorporated it into your assignment.

Resources… Davidson, Hall. “The Educator's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use.” TechLearning (22 Oct. 2002). 29 June opyright.php. opyright.php Rutkowski, Kathy. “The Ethics of Networking. Teachers/Students On The Range: Teaching Ethics and Promoting Law and Order in the Wild Wild Web.” Chaos Creations. (6 Nov. 1998) page--no longer available; contact author by at