Copy of Copyright & Fair Use

During this time of public emergency when education is quickly being moved online, providing access to learning materials for your students will almost always be protected by Fair Use; these are exigent circumstances with a limited timeline.  As you move materials online, here are some best practices to follow:

• Material you post should be restricted to students and faculty in the course.  This happens naturally when you post items via Canvas.
• Material should only be posted for the necessary amount of time.  Items can be set in Canvas to "self-destruct" on a certain date.
• When possible, stream video content through a licensed provider (Kanopy for example.). Many students also have subscriptions to other licensed services such as Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
• Search for OER—openly licensed material that you can use freely.
• Contact Irene McGarrity, Digital Learning Librarian (imcgarrity@keene.edu) with questions, for a consultation, or with help evaluating fair use.

Here are some links to further reading about copyright, fair use, and COVID-19. 

Copyright is a form of protection provided by the U.S. government (Title 17 US Code) to "original works of authorship"; this includes music, art, writing, and other media.  The work does not need to be published, and the copyright may not actually be owned by the person who created the work. Owners of copyright have the exclusive right to do the following:

• Reproduce the work
• Create derivative works
• Distribute copies of the work for sale, lease, or trade
• Perform, display, or play the work publicly

When using works in the Public Domain, you don't need to worry about fair use because these works are not protected by copyright. 

How Do I Know if a Work is in the Public Domain?

1. Any works published in the United States before 1923 are in the Public Domain.  

2. Works published between 1923 and 1964 that did not renew copyrights are also in the Public Domain. Check the Copyright Renewal Database. 

3. Government works are not copyrighted and can be used freely.

4. Works whose authors have chosen to relinquish their copyrights.  These will often (but not always) contain some indication of their public domain status. 

Creative Commons Licensing is essentially a way for creators to determine the copyrights they wish to retain. For many of us in academia it is more important to share our work with others than to profit from it, so we prefer to determine our own licensing requirements.

See Creative Commons for more details.  

Open Educational Resources is a general term describing a broad range of text-based content and multi-media freely available on the web that you can use in your classes. OER can be great resources for supplementing your course content. For more in depth information on OER, see our Open Educational Resources Guide.