Copyright and Fair Use for Faculty

This information was not created by an attorney and may not be taken as a legal interpretation of the law. It was created as a useful, informational guide for faculty wrestling with the issues of copyright and fair use.

The previous penalty for innocent infringements of copyright and fair use used to be $500-$20,000 per work infringed and up to $100,000 per work in cases of willful infringement, plus attorneys fees, in addition to injunctive relief. Copyright Statutory Damages have been increased to $30,000-$150,000 and also permit damages up to $250,000 upon proof of a pattern or practice of infringement.

In general, if you want to use a copy of an article, poem, chapter, music clip, video clip, or electronic image on a web page one time and the time period is defined with a clear beginning and ending date, and with access limited to class members, your usage falls within the definition of fair use.

Fair use criteria are timeliness, brevity and spontaneity. It is not fair use to use the entirety of a work. Once you want to repeat usage with a second class or during a different semester or put something on reserve again, then you must request permission of the copyright holder. The copyright permission must be displayed on each document, web site, or image.

All of this assumes that the work is protected. Copyright does not apply to work that is produced by the U.S. Government, works in the public domain, or works that lack originality (like phone books). You may use these types of work freely.

If the library owns a legal copy of a book or journal, then it may be placed on course reserves multiple times. This means the entire book or journal, not parts of it.

Coursepacks are only legal copies if the agency creating the coursepacks gets copyright permission for the individual works and displays such permission on each piece within the coursepack. The faculty member would be liable for copyright infringement without this.

On October 12, 1998 the United States Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (popular title of the WIPO Act). You can review the text of this law online from http://thomas.loc.gov/ searching under Public Laws of the 105th Congress for Public Law No. 105-304, 112 Stat 2860 (October 28, 1998).

On November 2, 2002, the President signed in to law the Technology, Education and copyright Harmonization Act [TEACH Act] (part of HR2215).  This law increased the ability of educators to use some copyrighted materials in distance education environments.  You can review the text of this law online at http://thomas.loc.gov/ searching under Public Laws of the 107th Congress for Public Law No. 107-273.

To learn more, there are numerous online resource and tutorials available.  Two of the better ones are shown below.
     >Crash Course in Copyright web site at the University of Texas.
     >Primer tutorial through the University of Maryland (requires Flash Player plugin)
      >Interactive Guide to Using Copyrighted Media in Your Course (Baruch College)