Copyright Law/Fair Use Guidelines

Please also see Tandem Friends School’s Acceptable Use Policy.

I. General Information

The Copyright Act, the federal statute establishing the terms of copyright protection, has its basis in the United States Constitution, which confers upon Congress the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited times to Authors…the exclusive Rights to their…writings." (Art. I, Sect. 8).

The Copyright Act protects all types of expression or authorship fixed in any tangible medium, including written works, paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, recorded music, sheet music, computer programs, video games, architectural design and choreography.

Copyright law conveys certain exclusive rights to the copyright holders, including the following rights: copying their works, making derivative works, distributing their works, and performing their works. These rights exist from the moment a work is created, whether or not a copyright notice appears on the work. It is always best to assume that the provisions of copyright law protect any materials being used for instructional purposes, unless the materials are explicitly identified as belonging in the public domain.

Copyright protection does not extend to works in the public domain, which include: (1) works for which the applicable term of copyright protection has expired; (2) works published by the federal government (e.g., published by the Centers for Disease Control or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration); (3) works that lack sufficient originality or expression to qualify for copyright protection (e.g., unadorned calendars, indices, phonebooks, factual databases); and (4) works expressly donated to the public domain. Such works may be copied and used without the permission of the author or publisher.

In using copyrighted materials for instructional purposes, even under "fair use" guidelines (see below), it is always wise to acknowledge the copyright owner in a very clear way.

II. Fair Use

Copyright law does allow limited copying, distribution, and display of copyrighted works without the author’s permission under certain conditions known as "fair use."

The following is the text of the Fair Use Statute of the U.S. Copyright Act, Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976: Limitations on exclusive rights/Fair use.

Note that the concept of "fair use" provides limited exemptions, and does not encompass wholesale copying and distribution of copyrighted work for educational or any other purpose without permission. Copying for an educational or scholarly purpose is not per se a "fair use."

Copyright law does not specify the exact limitation of fair use. Instead, the law provides four interrelated standards or tests, which must be applied in each case to evaluate whether the copying or distributing falls within the limited exemption of fair use.

These are the four standards:

1.The purpose and character of the use.

Duplicating and distributing selected portions of copyrighted materials for specific educational purposes falls within fair use guidelines, particularly if the copies are made spontaneously, for temporary use, and not as part of an anthology.

2. The nature of the copyrighted work.

Fair use applies more readily to copying paragraphs from a primary source than to copying a chapter from a textbook. Fair use applies to multimedia materials in a manner similar if not identical to print media.

3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.

Copying extracts that are short relative to the whole work and distributing copyrighted segments that do not capture the "essence" of the work are generally considered fair use.

4. The effect of use on the potential market for or value of the work.

If copying or distributing the work does not reduce sales of the work, then the use may be considered fair. Of the four standards, this is arguably the most important test for fair use.

Guidelines for the reproduction of copyrighted materials

1. Copying

Following the "fair use" guidelines, segments of copyrighted print, electronic, music, and multimedia materials may be captured, copies, digitized, transformed to another medium, or manipulated for educational purposes only, by members of the Tandem Friends School community. Burning CDs of copyrighted music and some file sharing may not be covered under Fair Use.

2. Acknowledgement

The holder of the copyright to each copied segment must be clearly and prominently acknowledged on or next to the print or digitized material, even when "fair use" guidelines are observed. Information to include would be title, author, publisher, place of publication, date of publication, and page numbers. To encourage students to abide by the schools academic integrity policy, all materials reproduced should be cited such that the source can be acknowledged using an established format. See the Tandem Friends School Library Citation Guidelines page for detailed citation formats.

Example of a full acknowledgement:

"This material has been reproduced from Random Reminiscences of Men and Events by John D. Rockefeller (Tarrytown, NY: Sleepy Hollow Press and Rockefeller Archive Center, 1984), p. 86."

3. Incorporating copyrighted materials into new works

Segments of print or digitized material may be incorporated into papers and projects for instructional and scholarly purposes. Permission must be sought to use digitized materials in works that are circulated beyond the original educational setting or that may have commercial value. Manipulation of digital images into new digital works of art is a violation of copyright.

4. Personal and course web pages

Faculty and students who create web pages must respect the rights of copyright holders. At a minimum, the same considerations that apply to written reproduction apply to electronic reproduction.

5. Images

When using images in web sites or other publications, a good rule of thumb is the smaller the image, the more that image qualifies under "fair use." In fact, thumbnail images under 125X125 have been cleared as fair use, as they are not suitable for sale as prints. Larger images tend to be protected under fair use if they are displayed in a secure (password protected) medium.

Digital images may be used by educators and students for display in non-commercial lectures and presentations, or for reproduction in course assignments. Digital images generally may not be used for reproduction and publishing, for creation of derivative works, or for manipulation of digital images into new digital works of art.

6. Music and videos

Downloading music and videos without paying for them is illegal. Illegal downloading is an infringement of copyright and intellectual property and is subject to serious penalties. It is legal to burn music from legal music downloading sites to a CD for your personal use. It is not legal to make copies of the CD or to email the music to friends.

III. Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a U.S. Copyright law that "criminalizes production and dissemination of technology whose primary purpose is to circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet."

The U.S. Copyright Office states that "uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner's exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages up to $30,000 for each work infringed and, if the copyright owner proves willful infringement, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. In addition, an infringer of a work may also be liable for the attorney's fees incurred by the copyright owner to enforce his or her rights."

Parents of minors are responsible for their children’s illegal activities on family computers.