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Copyright and Fair Use: Home

Copyright and Fair Use

Copyright:

A form of protection provided by the laws of the United States for "original works of authorship", including literary, dramatic, musical, architectural, cartographic, choreographic, pantomimic, pictorial, graphic, sculptural, and audiovisual creations. "Copyright" literally means the right to copy but has come to mean that body of exclusive rights granted by law to copyright owners for protection of their work. Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, title, principle, or discovery. Similarly, names, titles, short phrases, slogans, familiar symbols, mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, coloring, and listings of contents or ingredients are not subject to copyright. For more information, please visit https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/

Fair Use:

Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.  Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:

What is Copyright?

Fair Use

Educational Exceptions

Educational exceptions in the copyright law

Reproduction for instruction

Under Section 29.4 (1) of the Copyright Act, you are permitted to project an image for the purposes of education or training on the premises of an educational institution. Distance courses via the university's web conferencing software, e.g. Blackboard Collaborate or BBC Ultra, are included under the premises of an educational institution.

Work available through Internet

The Copyright Modernization Act, Section 30.04allows educational institutions, for educational purposes, to reproduce, save, download and share publicly available materials that are on the Internet, under certain conditions.

You can reproduce an entire image from the Internet, as long as:

  • the website is not questionable or is not using 3rd party material without the copyright owner's consent.
  • the content is not password protected or otherwise restricted from public access.
  • there is not a clearly visible posting on the website that prohibits educational use (and not merely the copyright symbol).
  • you do not need to break or circumvent a digital lock to obtain a copy of the material.
  • you provide the proper citation for the image(s).