The document discusses copyright issues related to using materials in online education. It provides 20 situations and indicates whether each would constitute copyright infringement or not. Some key issues covered include: scanning textbook chapters and using them repeatedly is infringement; recording TV shows or movies and uploading them is infringement; and using materials beyond allowed timeframes or altering the purpose they were intended for can also be infringement. The document is meant to help educate about copyright compliance when teaching online.

1. Copyright – What do you Know? Focus on Online
Learning
Read the following situations. Is it copyright infringement or not?
1. You’re teaching Sociology and you have a chapter from Yes No
an old textbook that you want your students to read. You
scan it and put it in your LMS course. They like it so much
you use it very semester.
2. You record an episode of the Sopranos from cable. You Yes No
decide it’s a good example of criminal activity, so you
convert it to MP4 and upload it in your Intro to
Criminology class.
3. You record a program from PBS’s Nova in October, Yes No
convert to MP4 and upload it to show in your online class
next March.
4. You encourage creativity in your students. For a project, Yes No
one group creates a video based on the CSI television
show and uploads it to the course LMS site.
5. In your online class, a student describes his idea for an Yes No
article on the discussion board. You encourage him to
write the article and submit it. A year later, you’re reading
a journal and see an article about that very idea, down to
the specifics, but it’s by a different student.
6. You teach Biology. You convert a portion of a VHS movie Yes No
you own to MPG4 and upload it to your class blog.
7. One of your students creates a video for your class. In Yes No
the play, a character sings Happy Birthday. The video is
uploaded to YouTube.
8. You scan a political cartoon and include it in a Yes No
PowerPoint presentation which you upload to the LMS.
9. You’re in the car listening to the radio. You hear a song Yes No
that illustrates perfectly the concept you want discuss in
class the next day. You go home and download the song
from iTunes. You insert it into your PowerPoint and after
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2. class, load the PowerPoint to your website.
10. Your students are struggling with a written Yes No
assignment. You find an old paper from a student last year
and upload it to show students a good example. You make
sure to remove the student’s name and any grading marks.
11. You find a great article online that you want to share Yes No
with a colleague. You copy the URL in an email that you
send to your colleague.
12. You teach Film Studies. Your department has Yes No
purchased a DVD for use in the classroom. You digitize a
small portion to illustrate a particular film concept.
13. You have taped interviews of several veterans. With Yes No
their permission, you edited the tapes into a montage
video and posted it on YouTube. A few months later, you
find out that an instructor at another university has
downloaded the video and used it in her class.
14. You find a website that has a really cool form to collect Yes No
information. You copy the source code and adapt it
slightly to fit your purposes. You use this form on your
website.
15. Your students will do a project. You download images Yes No
and photos from various non‐commercial websites and
store them in a WebCT folder for the students to access.
16. You assign a multimedia project to your students. They Yes No
combine text, video, audio and images and create a video
on YouTube.
17. You’re in the library reading an interesting article in Yes No
the latest issue of a journal in your discipline and you’d
like to incorporate the research into your online class
lecture notes. You make a photocopy of the article to take
home with you to prepare the lecture.
18. Several of your students haven’t got the textbook yet. Yes No
You make a scan of the first chapter for them so they
won’t get behind and post it online in Blackboard.
19. You record yourself and a few friends reading Hamlet. Yes No
You post the audio file in several clips online.
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3.
20. You’re teaching an online class. You need an picture of Yes No
the Eiffel Tower. You go to the library and find a book of
images published in 1918. You check it out, go home and
scan a picture. You place this image on your faculty
webpage.
Copyright – What do you Know?
Read the following situations. Is it copyright infringement or not?
Answers:
1. You’re teaching Sociology and you have a chapter from Yes
an old textbook that you want your students to read. You
scan it and put it in your LMS course. They like it so much
you use it very semester.
This is infringement for several reasons:
1. You use it more than one semester.
2. You are not allowed to copy/digitize from materials created for
educational use.
2. You record an episode of the Sopranos from cable. You Yes
decide it’s a good example of criminal activity, so you
convert it to MP4 and upload it in your Intro to
Criminology class.
You cannot copy and/or reproduce materials from pay services.
3. You record a program from PBS’s Nova in October, Yes
convert to MP4 and upload it to show in your online class
next March.
You must show the recorded program within 10 days of the recording
and destroy the recording after 45 days. It doesn’t matter if it was on
public television.
4. You encourage creativity in your students. For a project, Yes No
one group creates a video based on the CSI television
show and uploads it to the course LMS site.
Maybe. Did they in essence write an episode of CSI, using the same
characters? Or did they write a satirical interpretation of the show?
Parody is allowed under fair use. (Think Saturday Night Live!)
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4. 5. In your online class, a student describes his idea for an Yes No
article on the discussion board. You encourage him to
write the article and submit it. A year later, you’re reading
a journal and see an article about that very idea, down to
the specifics, but it’s by a different student.
Maybe. Ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted. But the particular
expression of them can be. Does the published article contain significant
identifiable sentences or paragraphs?
6. You teach Biology. You convert a portion of a VHS movie Yes No
you own to MPG4 and upload it to your class blog.
It depends on several factors: (1) how much did you digitize? You are
allowed 30% or 3 minutes, whichever is less. (2) Is your blog password­
protected? If not, then you cannot claim fair use.
7. One of your students creates a video for your class. In Yes No
the play, a character sings Happy Birthday. The video is
uploaded to YouTube.
Yes – Happy Birthday is under copyright. If it’s a one­time performance,
you might fall under fair use. However, since the student’s video is
performed every time the video is played, permission is required.
8. You teach Biology. You convert a portion of a VHS movie Yes No
you own to MPG4 and upload it to your class blog.
Maybe. You might fall under fair use, as long as the portion wasn’t very
long (3 minutes or 10%, the lesser). Ideally, materials should be
institutionally­owned. And as long as you don’t use it again next
semester. If you want to use it over and over, request permission from the
copyright holder.
9. You’re in the car listening to the radio. You hear a song Yes No
that illustrates perfectly the concept you want discuss in
class the next day. You go home and download the song
from iTunes. You insert it into your PowerPoint and after
class, load the PowerPoint to your website.
Maybe. Did you use the entire song? Is your website open to the public or
is in WebCT? Will you use the song in the PowerPoint next semester or
will you keep it on your website for more than a semester? Even if you
used the entire song, you might fall under fair use if the time between
when you heard the song (or had the idea to use it) and the lecture was
very short – unreasonable to request and gain permission). You can fall
under fair use if you use only 10% of the song, but only if you don’t use it
semester after semester. You cannot put your PowerPoint on an open
website.
10. Your students are struggling with a written Yes
assignment. You find an old paper from a student last year
and upload it to show students a good example. You make
sure to remove the student’s name and any grading marks.
Yes. Students own the copyright to their intellectual work, even if done
for a class.
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5. 11. You find a great article online that you want to share No
with a colleague. You copy the URL in an email that you
send to you colleague.
No. You can copy URLs and send them on – you are merely pointing to
the article. You would have infringed if you had made a pdf copy if it and
forwarded the article in email.
12. You teach Film Studies. Your department has No
purchased a DVD for use in the classroom. You digitize a
small portion to illustrate a particular film concept.
No. From November 27, 2006 ­ October 27, 2009, media studies faculty
were allowed to make digital copies of small portions of films. The
Register of the Copyright extended this exemption to the DMCA
indefinitely October 29, 2009. But keep an eye out; this could change.
13. You have taped interviews of several veterans. With No
their permission, you edited the tapes into a montage
video and posted it on YouTube. A few months later, you
find out that an instructor at another university has
downloaded the video and used it in her class.
Just as you can use works by others for educational use, so can others use
your work.
14. You find a website that has a really cool form to collect Yes
information. You copy the source code and adapt it
slightly to fit your purposes. You use this form on your
website.
If the source code and look of the form is distinctive, it may fall under
copyright. If it’s general form – with generally­used code, you may fall
under fair use.
15. Your students will do a project. You download images No
and photos from various non‐commercial websites and
store them in a WebCT folder for the students to view.
No. You can download and store images on an educational network that
is password­protected, as long as you include a copyright notice that
informs students they cannot print, publish, download, share. BUT
you cannot upload them back to the public web.
16. You assign a multimedia project to your students. They Yes No
combine text, video, audio and images and create a video
on YouTube.
Maybe. Students are required to adhere to the same copyright rules as
faculty. Assuming students have followed the copyright rules in creating
the projects, they are not in violation. But if they have not secured
permissions or sufficiently altered copyrighted materials, this is
infringement.
17. You’re in the library reading an interesting article in No
the latest issue of a journal in your discipline and you’d
like to incorporate the research into your online class
lecture notes. You make a photocopy of the article to take
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6. home with you to prepare the lecture.
No. As long as you don’t reproduce the article for your students or others.
You are allowed to make a single copy for your use in preparation or in
scholarly research. If you use a quote, you must cite it properly.
18. Several of your students haven’t got the textbook yet. Yes
You make a scan of the first chapter for them so they
won’t get behind and post it online in Blackboard.
Yes. You can make a single copy of a book chapter for yourself for your
use in preparation or in scholarly research. However, you cannot scan
and publish any portion of a text that is intended specifically for
educational use.
19. You record yourself and a few friends reading Hamlet. No
You post the audio file in several clips online.
Probably not. Hamlet is in the public domain. BUT you could not read or
act or show The Lion King, as it is still under copyright protection.
20. You’re teaching an online class. You need an picture of No
the Eiffel Tower. You go to the library and find a book of
images published in 1918. You check it out, go home and
scan a picture. You place this image on your faculty
webpage.
Probably not. It doesn’t matter that you put the image on a public
webpage. The book was published more than 90 years ago ­ it has fallen
into public domain. However, the image may still be under copyright to
someone other than the publisher (for example
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