Almost everything falls under copyright law. Whether there is a copyright notice on it or not, you should presume it is copyrighted until you have evidence otherwise. So how do you tell if you can use a document, video, image or audio clip in your class legally?

Can I legally reuse other people's content, graphics, and audio?

If you are embedding media (for example, embedding a YouTube or Kaltura video into your course page like the Creative Commons one below) or if you are linking to an outside source (like the link below to Columbia University), that is not affected by copyright. You are merely pointing students to the original source of the work, not duplicating or redistributing the work in any way. If you are not embedding from or linking to an outside source, there are three main allowances for use without requesting permission (and potentially paying a fee) to the copyright holder: public domain, Creative Commons, and fair use.

Public Domain

Copyright does not apply to works in the public domain; this includes general facts, words, ideas, names, short phrases (that are not trademarked slogans), method, content written or produced by the US government, and works old enough that copyright has expired. For more information on public domain works, please see the Columbia University copyright site.

Creative Commons

If the copyright holder has chosen Creative Commons (CC) licensing you may use the work based on the CC terms. Creative Commons and other Open Access publishing options allow copyright holders the ability to allow reuse of their works but still retain some rights under US law. For more on Creative Commons licensing, please see the following video.

Transcript of Creative Commons Kiwi

Credit for Video: Creative Commons Kiwi by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand (CC BY) license.

Fair Use

If you are using a small amount of a larger work, using it in a limited way, and controlling who can access the work, you may be able to use it under Fair Use guidelines. Fair Use means using a copyrighted work

for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

(17 USC Section 107)

To check if your planned use leans toward Fair Use ~ try the Fair Use Checklist.

What about Images from the Internet?

One thing to keep in mind is that images are not a special case. Everything on the internet should be presumed to be fully protected by copyright law - including images - unless it specifically states otherwise. There are many images that are freely available to use with or without attribution through public domain or Creative Commons licenses but they’re not necessarily easy to find. MorgueFile and Pixabay are good sources of images that do not need attribution. The Wikimedia Commons has a mix of images that do and do not require attribution. Compfight is a Flickr search tool that pulls Creative Commons licensed images that you can use with attribution.

Filtered Google Image Search

When using Google Image Search, you can filter by usage rights and select label for noncommercial reuse.

When searching images with Google, make sure to select labeled for non-commercial reuse.

Non-Filtered Google Image Search

What you commonly see on a non-filtered Google image search is a large number of stock photos that other people have paid for and placed on their website. So for example, the surprised girl in this Medical News Today article is for sale from the iStockphoto repository. You can tell that it looks like a commercial stock photo and using TinEye reverse image search it pulls right up as a commercial photo for sale. Commercial stock photos are never going to fall under fair use because if you use it without paying for it that explicitly replaces the sale of the copyrighted work, and there is a reasonably available licensing mechanism for use of the copyrighted work. If it is still a bit fuzzy, think of a picture you want to use in your course and walk through the following flow chart. (Click on the image to see full size. Image not accessible to screen readers.)

For more information regarding Copyright, please check out the Knowledge Base and Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning's webpage on Copyright.

Finished here?

Select "Next" to go to the next page, or choose a button to return to the course navigation.