Concept of Fair Use

Key Terms and Ideas: fair use, using internet resources,
using clip art

The copyright law and the courts (Legal Resources on the Web) have provided exceptions to the rules which govern the behavior of teachers, students and schools.

In general terms, teachers are allowed to make "fair use" of materials for instructional purposes.

"Fair use" has been interpreted to include those limited uses which are not likely to deprive a publisher or an author from income.

A teacher might make a copy of an article or a page from a book for use with a class to support a particular concept, but they may not make copies of the whole book or workbook for the entire class and use the copies as class texts. They are expected to buy them.

 

Use of Internet Resources

 

When applied to the Internet and the World Wide Web, "Fair use" of Internet resources by teachers should probably parallel use of print resources. Teachers might make limited use of some text and graphics within their own classrooms. They probably should not "publish" those same materials across other classrooms within the building by posting on a local area network (LAN) or across other classrooms in other buildings on a wide area network (WAN) or the World Wide Web.

In general terms, students might make rather liberal use of information, text and graphics so long as their resulting works remain within the classroom setting. The moment the works move out of the classroom, they may fall under a "public performance" clause of the copyright law which imposes much greater restrictions and fees. We must distinguish between "practice" publishing and "real" publishing.

***Important***

As a general rule, neither teachers nor students may safely make use of other's materials (graphics, text, etc.) when they publish on the Web unless they have requested and received formal permission to do so.

 Use of Clip Art

Students use animal pictures from a CD of clip art which has been purchased by the school to create a virtual museum which will be available on the school's web site. Is that legal? Many schools have purchased clip art collections to use with their students. How this art may be used is defined by the licensing agreement which accompanied the product upon arrival.  Some software and clip art is purchased to be used only on ONE computer. Other software and clip art is purchased to be used throughout a building, which is called having a "site license". If you haven't paid for a site license (which obviously costs more than a single copy), you shouldn't be using that software or clip art on more than one computer.

Unless there is a clear statement that art, photos and text are "public domain" and available for free use, the best policy is to assume that they are copyrighted and should not be taken and used for re-publication on a local area network, a wide area network or a Web site.

Most people agree that students may use these items for school reports, but some companies are extremely aggressive about their icons and logos. They do not take kindly to abusive use of their company images. Caution is advised.

If permission is granted, the best policy is to provide a credit line near the item or at the bottom of the page.

FAIR USE OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS
http://www.utsystem.edu/ogc/intellectualproperty/copypol2.htm

What is Fair Use?
http://www.umuc.edu/library/copy.html#fairuse