Copyright and Teaching - Do's and Don'ts

Ethical and Legal Use of Digital Media FAQ (Penn State) - is a valuable resource, easy to read and understand. Anyone working with technologies at Penn State is responsible for knowing these facts.

10 Big Myths about copyright explained by Brad Templeton - great summary of misinterpretations about copyright.

SOME EXAMPLES TO CLARIFY FAIR-USE

Probably can use for teaching under certain conditions (see resources for further explanation and exceptions)

• Pictures you've taken yourself of scenery, public areas, public buildings even if people are in the pictures. However, caution should be exercised if showing commercial products or circumstances that can be misinterpreted.
• Video of your own creation or your teaching (with permission to show, for example, any commercial products or lab equipment, faces of any individuals, etc.)
• Pictures from a collection that you purchased (if the company clearly has permission to sell to individuals or organizations and if your permission allows you to change from one media to another, e.g., from a CD-ROM to the web)
• A full news article from today's paper (but not last week's news article).
• Links to existing web sites (nice to ask permission if you will use a site extensively and often)

Can't use for teaching without permission (not an all-inclusive list, just examples):

• Photos of students (against privacy laws)
• Photos of people in non-public settings, including classrooms, labs
• Photos of art works (unless you personally created the art work and haven't given up the copyright to a publisher)
• Photos or reproductions of graphics from textbooks
• Video from a movie (unless you made the movie and have all rights, e.g., you can't digitize a rented video)
• Your own anthologies or collections of copyrighted works -- even if you took the pictures, digitized the materials, created the clips.
• Advertisements
• Graphics that you copy from someone else's web site.

RESOURCE

Digital Millennium Copyright Act by the UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy - a readable summary of the DMCA.