Fair Use

This page was created as a simple summary of some basic information. All teachers should be aware of this much about copyright. For more detail look at the links below. This was not written by a lawyer or intended to replace legal advice.

What was the main purpose of copyright law?

What is copyrighted?

Can you summarize "Fair Use"?

FAIR USE SUMMARY

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.

Tend to be Fair Use

Nonprofit
Educational
Personal

Tip in Favor of Fair Use

Criticism
Commentary
Newsreporting
Parody
Otherwise"transformative" use

Not Fair Use

Commercial

2. The nature of the copyrighted work

Balance in Favor of Fair Use

Fact
Published

Middling

A mixture of fact and imaginative

Balance toward need to ask permission

Imaginative
Unpublished

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

What about copyright on my OWN work?

What should a teacher do?

HOW TO CITE SOURCES
Classroom Connect

FOR MORE DETAIL
North Carolina Public Schools

Hall Davidson's Material (look down the page for Copyright-Includes a VERY helpful chart)-print the chart and put it by your work computer.

The TEACH Toolkit-relating mostly to online courses

UT System Crash Course in Copyright (highly recommended)-this is were I would go if I had a specific question.

Images and the Law

Myths and Misconceptions

Copywrite brochures from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in Missouri (download .pdf)

DECIDE YOUR OWN LEVEL OF COPYRIGHT

Creative Commons

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.