Librarian
Copyright and Fair Use
Unless you plan to publish or sell the work in which you are using copyrighted material, you are probably not violating the rights of any copyright holder. Proper citation and attribution also helps protect you from any unintentional misuse of copyrighted images or unintentional plagiarism. For your work in an educational setting, most of the uses of images will be within your rights. Nevertheless, we all wish to apply the rules correctly. Use the links and guidelines listed below to better inform yourself and how you can use copyrighted work.
Terms
Copyright: the exclusive legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute a work
Fair use: a legal doctrine that allows limited use of copyrighted material under certain circumstances without permission from the copyright holder (usually the creator), provided that the use is fair and reasonable and does not affect the market value of the original work
Public domain: freely available to the public / not subject to copyright
Copyright - general
- U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 107On fair use of copyrighted material
- Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United StatesWhether and for how long a work is protected under U.S. copyright law. - from the Copyright Information Center at the Cornell University Library
Copyright, Checklists, Charts and Tools
- Is It Protected by Copyright? A Public Domain digital sliderFrom the Copyright Advisory Network, a service of the American Library Association Office on Information Technology and Policy.
- The Copyright Genie
Is it covered by copyright? - Europeana Public Domain CharterEuropeana, Europe's digital library, museum and archive, belongs to the public and must represent the public interest.
Fair Use : visual arts/ images
- Fair Use evaluator
this tool can:
Help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code.
Collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation. - Code of Best Practices in Fair Use in the Visual Arts
This Code of Best Practices provides visual-arts professionals with a set of principles addressing best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. It describes how fair use can be invoked and implemented when using copyrighted materials in scholarship, teaching, museums, archives, and in the creation of art. - Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study
This Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the Visual Resources Association (vraweb.org) believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use. The six uses are: 1) preservation (storing images for repeated use in a teaching context and transferring images to new formats); 2) use of images for teaching purposes; 3) use of images (both large, high-resolution images and thumbnails) on course websites and in other online study materials; 4) adaptations of images for teaching and classroom work by students; 5) sharing images among educational and cultural institutions to facilitate teaching and study; and 6) reproduction of images in theses and dissertations.
Fair Use : checklists, charts & tools
- Can I Use That Picture? The Terms, Laws, and Ethics for Using Copyrighted Images
flowchart infographic (revised) 2019.
(original) - Digital Image Rights ComputatorOnline tool from the Visual Resources Association (VRA).
- Fair Use Checklist, Columbia University LibrariesThe Fair Use Checklist and variations on it have been widely used for many years to help educators, librarians, lawyers, and many other users of copyrighted works determine whether their activities are within the limits of fair use under U.S. copyright law (Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act). The four factors form the structure of this checklist. Congress and courts have offered some insight into the specific meaning of the factors, and those interpretations are reflected in the details of this form.
- Fair Use ChecklistFrom the American Library Association Office of Advocacy and Public Policy. Retrieved from:
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/copyright/FairUseChecklist.pdf
FOR STUDENTS:
Scholarly Work & Dissertations by Students (Columbia University)
FOR FACULTY:
Know Your Copy Rights chart (Association of Research Libraries, 2007)
Teaching Tools on Fair Use (College Art Association)
Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH Act):
U.S. Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 110 - §110(2) applies to online/distance education
TEACH Act Checklist (University of Texas Libraries)
- Exceptions for instructors in U.S. Copyright LawThe U.S. Copyright Code provides for the educational use of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder under certain conditions. To find out if your intended use meets the requirements set out in the law, use this free, online tool.
This tool can also help you collect information detailing your educational use and provide you with a summary in PDF format.
