Copyright Tips
From the Copyright Clearance Center: Here are some copyright essentials that will make it easier for faculty, staff, researchers, and administrators to navigate copyright and content use across campus.
Copyright Resources
Best Practices in Copyright and Fair Use
The first code for best practices on fair use was the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. It was created because documentary filmmakers found they were asked, unnecessarily, to clear permissions by legal departments, or even being sued for use of copyrighted material even though their use was legal. Since then, the best practices document has been helpful in setting standards for filmmakers, studios, lawyers, educators, and all sorts of people who might not be familiar with both copyright law and what is best practice. We've included some examples below, but you can find more fair use statements and educational materials - for journalism, media studies publishing, and dance-related materials among others - through the Center for Media & Social Impact.
- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online VideoThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video is published by the Center for Social and Media Impact.
From the website: This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances. - Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for PoetryThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry was written with the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, the American University's Center for Social Media, and the Washington College of Law. From the website: Devised specifically by and for the poetry community, this best practices code serves as a guide to reasonable and appropriate uses of copyrighted materials in new and old media. "This document," says project advisor Lewis Hyde, "brings wonderful clarity to the otherwise opaque world of poetry permissions. It is a useful tool that should serve poets, critics, and publishers alike." HMPI thanks all of the poets who gave so freely of their time and experiences to help make this document possible.
- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual ArtsThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is published by the College Art Association.
From the website: It provides visual-arts professionals with a set of principles addressing best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. It describes how fair use can be invoked and implemented when using copyrighted materials in:
- Analytic Writing: When may scholars and other writers about art invoke fair use to quote, excerpt, or reproduce copyrighted works?
- Teaching about Art: When may teachers invoke fair use in using copyrighted works to support formal instruction in a range of settings, including online and distance teaching?
- Making Art: Under what circumstances may artists invoke fair use to incorporate copyrighted material into new artworks in any medium?
- Museum Uses: When may museums and their staffs invoke fair use in using copyrighted works—including images and text as well as time-based and born-digital material—when organizing exhibitions, developing educational materials (within the museum and online), publishing catalogues, and other related activities?
- Online Access to Archival and Special Collections: When may such institutions and their staffs invoke fair use to create digital preservation copies and/or enable digital access to copyrighted materials in their collections? - Guidelines for the Use of Copyrighted Materials and Works of Art by Art MuseumsFrom the Association of Art Museum Directors, last revised March 2017 and quite detailed.
- Rights Statements for Cultural Heritage InstitutionsFrom the website: RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public. Our rights statements are supported by major aggregation platforms such as the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana. The rights statements have been designed with both human users and machine users (such as search engines) in mind and make use of semantic web technology.
- Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media EducatorsThis code of best practices in fair use in teaching for film/media educators was designed by The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. It deals with classroom screenings, broadcasts, and derivative works.
- Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and StudyFrom the website: The Visual Resources Association has released its own code of best practices in fair use. It will be enormously valuable to art teachers, librarians, curators, publishers and more...The Statement should allow students, faculty, and other professionals to get back to work. It describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use.
Copyright Tips
QUICK TIPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF
Given how nuanced copyright and fair use are and the complexities of digital use and sharing, these tips can help keep you in the safe zone.
Limit your exposure: Use a password-protected space like Google Classroom or any learning management system (LMS) to share published materials with your students, instead of using your class webpage. That way, you’re sharing to the students in your class only.
Use Google’s Tools setting: After a search for an image has produced results, click Tools/Usage Rights/Creative Commons license to filter images.
Install browser extensions: Install add-ons from Flaticon’s Icons for Google Slides and Docs and Noun Project so that you can easily search and insert free images.
Use Project Gutenberg: It’s a library of over 60,000 free e-books (and counting) for which copyright has expired. You can read them in a browser or on Kindle, or opt to download them. All of Shakespeare’s work is there, for example, in addition to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, and works of many other authors.
Bookmark Creative Commons sites: The emergence of the internet spawned an innovation in copyright management called Creative Commons, which allows the creators of photos, videos, and text to apply transparent copyright rules and make the content available broadly. The Creative Commons search tool is invaluable for finding content you can use legally. Also bookmark sites that collect images, videos, or text that is shared under liberal Creative Commons rules—like Flickr, Pixabay (images, videos, and music), and Unsplash (photos); Noun Project (icons and photos); and Bensound, which has a library of free audio files—in addition to higher-quality files you need to purchase. Share the bookmarks with your students.
Don’t forget Wikipedia: It’s the grandfather of Creative Commons sites. You can copy or alter the text of this comprehensive resource, updated by volunteers who are often experts, if you include the backlink. Students should be warned, of course, that Wikipedia is subject to hacks (both malicious and comical), and the information should be verified with other sources.
Make use of free audiobooks: Multiple sites like Librivox and Spotify share free audiobooks. Titles on Spotify range from George Orwell’s Animal Farm to Hans Christian Anderson’s The Fir Tree.
Use resources from government sites: NASA, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, primary sources from the Library of Congress, and materials from state or local government agencies are a treasure trove for teachers.
Know that there isn’t an urgency exemption: No matter how desperate the situation or noble your intentions, don’t make and distribute copies of entire books, workbooks, study guides, practice books, or even an entire page from a textbook. Purchase enough copies for each student, or obtain permission from the owner to make copies.
Avoid copying and distributing “creative material”: Novels, plays, movies, and poems are far more likely to be exempt from fair use.
Use published sources: Never copy and distribute unpublished material.
When in doubt, reach out: If a publication or resource you need is out of print and you cannot buy it (e.g., an out-of-print book), reach out to the publishing company and ask permission to make copies.
Plan ahead: Don’t wait until the last minute and use something in haste.
Source: Karen Lagola, "A Teacher's Guide to Copyright and Fair Use." Edutopia, 22 March 2021.
