This "decision tree" helps guide students and instructors through the copyright process.
US Copyright law: Compliments of the University of Arkansas
Copyright law protects the exclusive rights of a holder to authorize others to copy, create derivative works, distribute, publicly perform, or publicly display a work. Most copyrights expire 120 years after creation. The work is considered in the public domain after that time and free to use. Works created by the federal government are not subject to copyright and are permissible. If faculty wish to use copyrighted material in an online course the use must fall under the provisions of the TEACH Act or be considered "Fair Use". If the use does not meet one of those criteria, faculty must obtain permission (written in most instances).
TEACH Act
The TEACH Act (Section 110) of the copyright law outlines provisions for online courses. If the copyright issue does not fall under provisions of the TEACH Act it may still be allowable under "Fair Use". In order to claim use under the TEACH Act, a number of obligations must be met. In order to perform or display works in an online class it must be:
Three additional requirements must be met.
Fair Use
"Fair Use" describes the condition where limited use of copyrighted material is allowed without obtaining express permission from the rights holder. There are four factors when determining "fair use" of copyrighted items:
Additional Material
Association of Research Libraries - Know Your Copy Rights Site produced by the Association of Research Libraries to make faculty members aware of copyright issues and best practices.
University of Minnesota - Thinking Through Fair Use an analysis tool that provides a checklist for "Fair Use" consideration
What is a Fair Use?
Use the following to help determine if your use is Fair Use:
Deciding if what you want to do falls within the Fair Use can be difficult. Following are some links to checklist and evaluators. See if one of them can help you with this decision. And, to be safe -- if it has an option to print the results, do so. Then you can file it with your materials to show that you did your best to follow the law based on the expertise and advise of organization that should know.