Copyright for educators - Copyright and permissions - Web Publishing & Collaboration Guide

This article explains copyright and U.S. copyright law primarily with respect to education. For a full discussion of copyright law and its implications, consult the U.S. Copyright Office.

Rights reserved to authors

Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and
In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright. (However, these rights are not unlimited in scope; see Limitations on Copyright, below.)

Who can claim copyright

Copyright protection begins automatically as soon as a work is created in fixed form. Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required. This means that any written document, drawing, or photograph, whether published or not, may be eligible for copyright. Only the author or creator of the work (or those deriving their rights through the author or creator) can claim copyright.

Copyright registration

Registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required for an author to claim copyright. However, registration makes it easier to sue for monetary damages when copyright is infringed.

Copyright notice

Prior to 1989, notice was required for a work to be protected by copyright. This is no longer the case, but the rule may still apply to works created before 1989. Additionally, a copyright notice serves as fair warning of the work’s status. If someone infringes on a copyright (by reprinting the work, for example), he or she may plead innocent infringement if no copyright notice was given. If copyright notice was given, the infringer cannot plead ignorance.

A typical copyright notice contains the symbol ©, the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright holder, for example © 2005 John C. Doe. The use of the copyright notice does not require permission from the U.S. Copyright Office.

Limitations on copyright

Copyright protection is not unlimited. Terms of copyright are limited, and individuals retain certain "fair use" rights to copyrighted work.

Expiration of copyright

Under current U.S. copyright law, most works are automatically protected from the moment of their creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author’s life plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death. Consult the U.S. Copyright Office for details.

Fair use

Fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and "transformative" purpose such as commentary, criticism, or parody. "Fair" uses do not require permission from the copyright owner. For a full explanation of fair use, see our article on fair use.

Other educational use

Section 110(1) of the Copyright Act explicitly permits teachers and students in a nonprofit educational institution to perform or display any copyrighted work in the course of face-to-face teaching activities. In face-to-face instruction, such teachers and students may act out a play, read aloud a poem, display a cartoon or a slide, or play a videotape so long as the copy of the videotape was lawfully obtained. In essence, Section 110(1) permits performance and display of any kind of copyrighted work, and even a complete work, as a part of face-to-face instruction.

Distance learning. The 2002 TEACH Act extended this permission to certain distance learning environments, but with additional restrictions to ensure that the work is used only in an instructional context and that (in the case of performances of audiovisual works) the work cannot be illegally downloaded by students or further distributed. The TEACH Toolkit from North Carolina State University provides detailed information and guidelines on the use of copyrighted works in distance learning environments.

Warning! This provision does not permit teachers to make and distribute copies of works. It extends only to performances and displayes of single copies of a work. Also be certain that your display or performance of the work is exclusively instructional; the showing of a film on the last day of school for entertainment purposes may not fall under this provision and is not covered by fair use.

A chart of copyright and fair use guidelines for classrooms is available from the University of Colorado.

Works not eligible for copyright

Several categories of material are generally not eligible for federal copyright protection. These include:

Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression (for example, choreographic works that have not been notated or recorded, or improvisational speeches or performances that have not been written or recorded)
Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a description, explanation, or illustration
Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship (for example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources)

With regard to education, a lesson plan that is written down and published is eligible for copyright protection in its written form, but the ideas and/or teaching strategies described by the written plan are generally not eligible for copyright and hence can be borrowed or used by another teacher in his/her teaching.

Common copyright violations

The internet and related technologies have not changed the principles behind copyright law, but they have made it easier to unknowingly violate the law. Additionally, although fair use allows for personal and educational use, it is easy for teachers and students to overstep the provisions of fair use.

Posting something to the public web is legally considered to be publication. If you post copyrighted material, such as an image, to a website where anyone can view it, without specific permission, you are infringing upon copyright. This includes material already published on the web! You may, however, provide a link to the copyrighted material if it is available on the web.
If students use copyrighted material such as images in reports or in-class multimedia presentations, the teacher may not publish those reports or multimedia presentations to a school website.
Distributing a copyrighted resource via email, especially over a listserve or discussion list, may be a violation of copyright.
Photocopying an article or other resource for personal use generally falls under fair use, as does asking students to make copies; but making multiple copies and distributing them, even in a classroom setting may not fall under fair use.