Copyright protects original works of authorship including writing, music, art, and other creative works. It exists to provide financial incentive for creative works by allowing creators to profit from their work. Anything in a fixed, tangible form is protected by copyright from the moment it is created. Educators can legally use works that are in the public domain, fall under fair use guidelines, or they have permission to use from the creator. Fair use allows limited use of copyrighted works for purposes like teaching without permission as long as it is for a non-profit educational use, only a small portion is used, and it does not harm the market for the original work.

1. Copyright and Fair Use Basics

2. What is copyright? “Here in the information age, virtually all intellectual creations can be protected by some form of intellectual property law. Intellectual property divides the universe of intellectual creations into three domains: copyrights, trademarks and patents. In a nutshell, copyright protects expression, trademark protects names, and patents protect ideas.” http://www.benedict.com/

3. Why does copyright protection exist?People felt that creativity was a worthwhile endeavor. A composer who wrote music or an author who wrote a book could either receive one fee for their work and be a pauper or could receive a perpetual income related to the popularity of their work and have the financial encouragement to continue composing or writing.Basically, copyright is a way to say that we appreciate the creative works of people and feel they should be compensated for their efforts.

4. So, the following are copyrighted:Written expression (books, articles, plays, informational websites, etc.)Music and audio recordingsChoreographyArtistic works (paintings, photographs, sculpture, architecture, etc.)Basically any form of expression is protected by copyright as soon as it is in “a fixed, tangible form”. http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/What.aspx

5. So, what can educators use?Anything in public domainAnything that falls within the fair use guidelinesAnything the creator grants permission for you to use

6. Public DomainSince copyright law is primarily to compensate people who create, at some point after their death the creation enters into public domain and any one can use it with paying a royalty. The timing of when a creation becomes public domain has changed many times and can be determined by a somewhat complicated flowchart. See the flowchart at http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/Duration.aspx .

7. Fair UseThe premise behind copyright law was to prevent theft of intellectual material (prevent someone from making money off someone else’s creation).

8. To be considered fair use of a copyrighted work ALL of these conditions must be met:Purpose must be for teaching, news reporting, research, criticism or other non-profit use.The work is worthy of copyright protection. Technically anything our students write is protected by copyright, but not all of it is something that people would pay money to read.The amount of material used is a small fraction of the whole work. No more was taken than necessary to achieve the academic purpose. The general guideline for music is whichever is shorter: 10% or 30 seconds. These are guidelines, but not stated rules.The use will not cause financial harm to the creator.

9. Permission Granted: Wikimedia CommonsA service of WikipediaFree use imagesHas 8 million media filesCheck it out: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

10. So, let’s play legal or illegal!You go to Applebee’s for your birthday and they sing you the traditional song “Happy Birthday to you…”ILLEGAL – this is the reason restaurants make up their own birthday songs. “Happy Birthday” is still protected by copyright.The first few bars of “Hey Jude” is offered as a free ringtone.LEGAL as long as the company is not making money off it and it’s only a small portion of the song.Teenagers downloading songs from a website for free.ILLEGAL if the artist has not granted permission, but LEGAL if the artist has offered it for free to try to build their fan base.A teacher showing a movie like ”Apollo 13” for science class.ILLEGAL Even though most teachers use whole movies, it is not really fair use and therefore technically illegal.