Am I allowed to use that?

Time for a pop quiz! What is copyright? What is fairuse? How much is considered a permissible amount? As teachers we are often not concerned with what we use as we are allowed to use almost anything for educational purposes. Our students can do the same in class. But where is the line drawn? Have you crossed it – knowingly or unknowingly? Have you taught your students what is ok? I admit I was shaky on the guidelines for all of these as well. I am used to only using these in class but now that I am working with a blog and my own website I have to be more careful.

So what is copyright? A copyright is a legal tool used to allow the owner control on how much their work is used. It gives the author incentives for creating new product. In order to be copyrighted, the material must be original, have minimal creativity (not be identical to prior copyrighted work), and be fixed in some way (on paper, electronic, words or audio). By copyrighting material authors can control making copies, selling/distributing their work, creating new works based on the previous work, and performing/showing the work in public.

Fairuse is a term I am not sure I had heard of but it is incredibly important to me as a teacher as it is what my use falls under. Teachers use copyrighted material without permission under fairuse all the time. For example, using a chapter from a book, an article from a newspaper, a short story, an essay, a poem, or a chart, graph, diagram, cartoon, picture all fall under fairuse.


Now, how do you know exactly what you can use and how much? In using anything there are guidelines that say up to 10% or “X” – whichever is less. When using media such as movies or clips you can use up to 10% or three minutes (whichever is less). Text can be used up to 1,000 words or 10%, however, a poem less than 250 words can be used in its’ entirety. Music (lyrics, audio, or video) can use up to 10% but no more than 30 seconds. For illustrations or photographs, you cannot use more than five images from one artist/photographer and not more than 10% or 15 images from a collection of work. When using databases you can use up to 10% or 2,500 fields/cells. You must always choose the option that is less.

What teachers should be aware of is that making copies of a variety of works and using them to replace a book, using the same work semester after semester, using the same material for different courses at the same time, or copying more than nine separate times in a semester should be steered away from. If you want to use materials outside the classroom, want to use them repeatedly, or use an entire work – you will need to get permission. To do these things, you would be outside of fairuse. To get permission you will contact the person holding the copyright.

I hope this was as educational for my readers as it was for me. I plan to have students create more using technology this coming year and they need to know these rules. Educational fairuse will not protect them forever. Understanding copyright is part of their technology literacy.