Legally Reusing Content
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.
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 Links to an external site..
If the copyright holder has chosen Creative Commons (CC) licensing you may use the work based on the CC terms. Creative Commons Links to an external site. and other Open Access publishing options Links to an external site. 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.
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.
To check if your planned use is Fair Use try the Fair Use Checklist Download Fair Use Checklist.
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 Links to an external site. and Pixabay Links to an external site. are good sources of images that do not need attribution. The Wikimedia Commons Links to an external site. has a mix of images that do and do not require attribution. Compfight Links to an external site. is a Flickr search tool that pulls Creative Commons licensed images that you can use with attribution.
When using Google Image Search, you can filter by usage rights and select label for noncommercial reuse.
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 Links to an external site. is for sale from the iStockphoto repository Links to an external site.. You can tell that it looks like a commercial stock photo and using TinEye reverse image search Links to an external site. 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 Links to an external site.. (Click on the image to see full size. Image not accessible to screen readers.)
