Copyright Information
Copyright law in the United States only protected published works until the Copyright Act of 1976. This is the current law for the protection of copyrighted property. The creator of a work does not need to publish it, copyright begins at creation. Copyright law lists literary, musical, dramatic, pictorial, choreographic, motion picture, sound recordings and architectural works as copyrightable. Just as with any real property, a copyright holder can transfer the property under contractual agreement. This is the fundamental principle behind obtaining copyright permission from a copyright holder. The Copyright Act defines the term of copyright to be the life of the author plus 50 years for individuals and 75 years from publication for a company. Creation of a work in fixed form is all that is necessary, notice of copyright and registration of the copyright is optional. Copyright registration must be done through the Library of Congress Register of Copyrights. Works that are not protected by copyrights are said to be in the public domain. These include works with expired copyrights. Section 107 of the Copyright Act states that the fair use of a copyrighted work for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting and teaching, scholarship or research is not a copyright infringement. In actual practice, this is much more complicated than it seems. The Kinko's case in 1991 made it necessary for professors to pay royalties for photocopied course packets. Since then, improvements in the process for requesting permission has made it easier to comply with the law. Our local photocopy store clears all of the copyrights and passes along the charges to students. Presently, we have custom course packets photocopied for all of our courses. We must pay for royalties in addition to the photocopy costs, but it allows us to use material from a variety of copyright sources in one bound volume. The price to students varies from $11 to $97 for the largest packet in the Contemporary Performance Theory course. Please refer to the fair use section below for further details.
Copyright notice. Although a copyright notice has not been required since March 1989, it is probably a good idea to include one on your web pages to identify your copyrighted work. In order to be valid, a copyright notice must contain three elements: 1.) the symbol © the word "Copyright" or the abbreviation "Copr"; 2.) the year in which the work was published and 3.) the name of the copyright owner. Please refer to the copyright notice at the bottom of this page for reference.
Once you have determined that the material you want to use is not in the public domain and the use is not fair use, you must obtain permission to use the material. The following steps must be taken to obtain permission:
The doctrine of fair use became a statutory provision subsequent to the Copyright Act became effective on January 1, 1978. The concept of fair use developed as litigation and subsequent decisions defined the relationship between the rights of copyright owners and uses of copyright material by the public. There are four aspects that must be considered in determining what is fair use. Not all educational uses are fair use. Section 107 of the Coyright Law contains the criteria for fair use. First, "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or for nonprofit educational purposes." This point is easy to satisfy for scholars and educators. Second, "the nature of the copyrighted work." Is the work limited to the educational market or is it aimed at the general public? The third aspect must consider "the amount and subtantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole." Of course, some small portions of a work may be the most important, so there is a test of "substantiality." This quantifies the fair use to determine whether it is an infringement. The fourth criteria assesses "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." If you wish to learn more about fair use, you should obtain a copy of the "Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia."
Copyright Resources and Websites
© Copyright 1999-2006 by Patrick M. Finelli. All rights reserved. These pages are protected by United States and international copyright laws. Copying or distribution by any means is strictly prohibited.