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Copyright

Educational Guidelines

Under the fair use rule of copyright law, a person may make limited use of another author's work without asking permission.

For Printed Materials:

  • a single chapter from a book (5% of work for in-print; 10% of work for out-of-print)
  • a single article from a journal issue or newspaper
  • a short story, essay, or poem from an individual work
  • a single chart, diagram, graph, drawing, cartoon, or picture from a book, journal, magazine, or newspaper

For Multimedia Materials:

​Multimedia works are created by combining copyrighted elements such as movies, music, sounds, graphics, and text. It is recommended that you use only small portions of other people's works.

Suggested limits:

  • Movies: up to 10% or three minutes, whichever is less
  • Text: up to 10% or 1,000 words, whichever is less (The limits on poetry are more restrictive)
  • Music: up to 10% of an individual copyrighted musical composition, and 10% of a copyrighted sound recording. Using up to 30 seconds of music may be done without gaining permission from the copyright holder.
  • Photos and Illustrations: based on the CONFU guidelines, "a photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety, but no more than five images by one artists or photographer may be incorporated into any one multimedia program. From a published collective work, not more than 10% or 15 images, whichever is less, may be used."

Distributing Copies of Materials:

  • Copies made should not substitute for the purchase of the material
  • A copyright notice should be placed on the first page of the copied material. As a minimum, the notice should state: "Notice: This material is subject to the copyright law of the United States."
  • Provide only one copy per student
  • Using the copied materials for more than one semester requires copyright permission from the copyright holder

Citing Materials from the Internet:

  • Cite the source
  • If you use any of the information on your personal webpage, either ask permission of the copyright holder or link to the copyright holder's site
  • If you receive permission to use copyrighted materials, keep a copy of the correspondence for your records

Citing Multimedia:

  • Incorporate only portions of copyrighted works when creating your own multimedia projects
  • Cite the source of all copyrighted material that is used
  • Place a copyright notice on the opening screen of a multimedia program and on accompanying print material that states (recommended practice): "Certain materials in this multimedia presentation are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and are restricted from further use."

Note:

Fair use exemptions of the copyrighted materials expire at the end of two years. To use the multimedia project beyond two years requires the permission of the copyright holder.

Library Reserve Guidelines

Photocopied material will be placed on E-Reserve only within the limits suggested by the Copyright Law of 1976 and related educational guidelines. Books placed on Reserve do not require copyright permission; examination copies and items owned by other libraries cannot be placed on Reserve.

As library staff interpret the Fair Use provision of the Copyright Law (17 USC 106 et seq), the library will accept for E-Reserve a single copy of an article from a journal or a single chapter of a book without permission of the copyright holder.

If an instructor wishes to use the same photocopy for more than one semester, permission from the publisher may be necessary. Such permission must be obtained by the instructor.

Library staff will not place items on Reserve if those items are considered in violation of copyright; exceptions to Copyright Law will not be made.

Best Practices in Canvas

Posting an item to Canvas does not exempt an instructor from copyright regulations. Instructors are encouraged to follow copyright best practices, listed in order of preference:

1.     Link to your article from a library database (see below for more information)

2.     When all else fails, complete a Fair Use Evaluation, scan your article, and then upload it to Canvas

3.     Fair use does not allow for repeated use over multiple semesters. For repeated use you will have to contact the publisher and request permission (see the Requesting Permissions tab on this guide).

Additional Resource: Using Course Management Systems: Guidelines and Best Practices for Copyright Compliance

Please see the following chart for examples of items that are allowed and not allowed:

Table: Best Practices in Canvas.  Contact us if for details.  Amanda Zerangue 940-898-3747 or Adrian Shapiro 940-898-3769


(Please note that these are suggested guidelines based on one interpretation of the U.S. Copyright Law. If in doubt, it is always advisable to error on the side of caution and complete a Fair Use Evaluation.)

Persistent Links: If you copy a database link from your Internet browser into Canvas, that link will eventually stop working because it is a dynamic, non-static link. To eliminate this problem, most database suppliers now offer persistent links for their articles. Persistent links (also known as persistent URLs) are stable links that will consistently take students to a particular full-text article in a library database. 

For assistance see PURLS 

Note: to ensure access by off-campus users, use persistent links. 

CONFU: Conference on Fair Use

CONFU guidelines clarify the application of fair use of copyrighted works in the digital educational environment. CONFU guidelines are particularly useful for educators and students who are working on educationally-related projects like video podcasting, multimedia projects utilizing sound and videos.

Based on CONFU guidelines educators and students do not need to get copyright permissions if they make a good faith effort to adhere to the suggested limits for multimedia.

Exemptions for nonprofit libraries and archives are covered in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. (Specifically, Section 404 of the DMCA amends the exemption in section 108 of the Copyright Act to accommodate digital technologies and evolving preservation practices).

It is permissible to create a compilation CD of separate music tracks for classroom use, if it adheres to the proportions and limits below 

Limits:

Medium Proportion Limits Guidelines
Film, Video 10% 3 minutes n/a
Music, Lyrics, Music Video 10% 30 seconds No change to character of melody or work

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (pdf) was passed into law in 1998 to address some of the issues unique to digital copyright. In order to help copyright holders protect their digital content, the DMCA contains provisions forbidding circumvention of digital protections and protecting copyright management information.

The anti-circumvention provisions prohibit the unauthorized circumvention of technological measures which control access to or restrict the use of a copyright-protected work. Such technological measures may involve a password or encryption; breaking the password or encryption is illegal.

Copyright management information includes the title of a work, the name of the author or copyright holder and other identifying information. Intentionally removing or altering such information violates a provision of the DMCA.

Note: Multimedia projects that are educationally-related are only valid for a duration of two years from the date of creation. After the two year period has expired the content can no longer be displayed.