HCPS Copyright

What is the point of all this copyright stuff? Well the goal is two fold. One, we’d like you to live a life free from lawsuits and strife. Two, we’d like to help you be better prepared to model copyright behavior for your students and advise them correctly when they have copyright questions.

Fair Use

One key factor in determining what you can do is the idea of fair use, in particular the idea of fair use in education. Fair use is not a set of laws. It’s more like a set of rough guidelines divided into four portions. Fair use is all about finding the balance that keeps you on the safe side of the law while still allowing you to use everything you legally can.

It helps to keep the following concepts in mind when trying to figure out if your use is going to fall under the fair use exemptions-

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Help?

You might now be calling me names. I know. Fair use is not black and white. It’s a bunch of fairly vague statements. Welcome to the world of copyright! Imagine how I feel. I had to read like four thousand books about this and you just have this one little class.

To help you figure things out- I give you the refuge of a simple check off sheet, although you still have to evaluate your results. I told you copyright was hard- so much personal responsibility!

It is available in PDF format in black and white and color. To download the files simply click on the image of the file you’d like. You might want to choose black and white if you plan to copy them. While I’d recommend using virtual share, I understand some of us have a copier addiction that is hard to shake.

These sheets are based on the Creative Commons licensed worksheets available from the great book Complete Copyright: An Everyday Guide for Librarians by Carrie Russell

Photo credits -
Day 27 :: Some Days – Meredith Farmer
“Walkaway” – Meredith Farmer