Learn About copyright and Fair Use

Copyright Information:


Standard 8: of the Infomation Literacy standards for student Learning: A student who contributes positively to the learning community and to society is information literate and practice ethical behavior in regards to information and information technology. To learn more about using ethical behavior review the following text about "Copyright and Fair Use"

Definitions


Copyright


A copyright is a legal device that gives the creator of a literary, artistic, musical, or other creative work the sole right to publish and sell that work. Copyright owners have the right to control the reproduction of their work, including the right to receive payment for that reproduction.

Public Domain


If a work is in the Public Domain, you may use it without permission. All U.S. Government publications are in the Public Domain. Works published more than 75 years ago are usually in the Public Domain.

Fair Use

  1. Students may use portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works in their academic multimedia projects, with proper credit and citations.
  2. Students may retain them in personal portfolios as examples of their academic work.
  3. Fair use ends when the multimedia creator loses control of his product's use, such as when it is accessed by others over the Internet.
  4. Educators and students need not write for permission if their presentation falls within the specific multimedia fair use guidelines.
  5. Before using a picture, text, music, video, lyric, or illustration in a multimedia presentation, think about who owns that information and ask yourself if it's legal to use. You may use portions of copyrighted works in your multimedia projects with proper credit and citations. You may retain them in personal portfolios as examples of your academic work.
  6. On the Internet, there is a mix of copyrighted works and works in the public domain.
  7. Just because it is technically easy to copy a picture from the Internet, does not mean that you have the right to use it without following certain guidelines.
  8. Works in the public domain mean you can use them without following the guidelines. However, be cautious.
  9. Some works may be posted on the Internet without authorization of the copyright holder and it may appear that the works are in the public domain.
  10. Students can use copyrighted materials in multimedia presentations if they follow these guidelines:
  11. portion limits are observed
  12. motion: up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less
  13. text: up to 10% or 1000 words, whichever is less;
  14. poem less than 250 words; no more than 5 poems of different poets from an anthology; only 3 poems per poet
  15. music, sound: up to 10% but not more than 30 seconds
  16. video :up to 10% but not more than 3 minutes
  17. illustrations/photographs: no more than 5 images by an artist, or 10% or 15 images from a
  18. published collected work: opening slide
  19. The first slide of your project must include a notice that the following work contains copyrighted materials that have been incorporated under the fair use exemption.
  20. Multimedia presentation citations
  21. You must credit sources, giving full bibliographic information when available. Copyright information for images may be shown in a separate bibliographic section.
  22. Copyright for Internet Pages If you are going to publish a web page, there are a lot of items that you need to consider:
  23. Copyrighted material If you see an item you would like to use on your web page, you must ask permission to use it if it's copyrighted.
  24. Example: If you wanted to use Mickey Mouse on your page, you would have to contact Disney and obtain a license to use the image. The license would spell out how you could use the image, how much you would have to pay, and any other conditions and restrictions.
  25. Public Domain If you see an item on some else's web page that is in the public domain, you are free to download it and incorporate it into your web page.
  26. Implied Public Access
    You are able to attach hypertext links to any other location on the web and others have the permission to link to your web page.

    To learn more about copyright, fair use and intellectual property use the following Web links

  27. Ten Big Myths About Copyright Explained
  28. United States Copyright Office
  29. Copyright Website

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