Copyright Law Part II

There are four factors that will help determine whether the use made of work is fair use.  The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit education purposes;

• The nature of the copyrighted work;
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

So it would seem that it’s “fair use” if…

• The copying is for educational use;
• The original material is mainly facts and is published;
• You use portions to make your point, not whole sections; and
• You’re not taking potential sales away from the original o You’re not providing copies just so your students don’t have to pay for the books (or original source materials). 

Between 1992-1994, a group of publishers and educators gathered to agree to more specific guidelines so educators won’t be sued for copyright infringement when they were thinking their copying was “fair use.” The result was the Fair Use Guidelines for educational Multimedia.

Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia

The Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia is not a legal document, but only an interpretation of the Copyright Act of 1976 by CONFU, a group of educational users and copyright owners (who obviously have a stake in this interpretation).

Students may:

• incorporate portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works when producing their own educational multimedia projects for a specific course;
• perform and display their own projects in the course for which they were created; and
• retain them in their own portfolios as examples of their academic work for later personal uses such as job and school interviews.

Educators may:

• Incorporate portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works when producing educational multimedia projects to support their teaching needs; and
• Present their projects in the following situations:Face-to-face instruction, Assigned to students for directed self-study, Remote instruction (with limitations).
• Retain their projects indefinitely for the following purposes: – To perform or display in presentations to their peers, for example, at workshops and conferences – To retain in their personal portfolios for personal uses such as promotion or job interviews
• Educators may use their projects for teaching, for a period of up to two years after the first instructional use with a class.
• Instructional use beyond that time period requires permission for each copyrighted portion incorporated in the production.