Copyright & Fair Use
Information, as well as sound, pictorial, literary, and graphical works, may be intellectual property protected by copyright law. When copying someone's work to a Web page, you need to carefully consider copyright restrictions. A good "catch all" rule to follow is to consider all online and otherwise published works as copyright protected, unless they explicitly state otherwise. Two exceptions to this are:
- Public Domain content, such as what is available from government Web sites;
- Fair Use purposes, which allow use of copyrighted material without permission, if the fair use criteria are met.
For an overview of fair use criteria, read the five pages of Copyrights and Copying Wrongs. Then print the Checklist for Fair Use. Consider the factors on the checklist when deciding on whether or not to use any material without permission. Weigh the factors favoring versus opposing fair use to reach your decision. In any case, always cite the source of copyrighted material that you use.
Use the checklist and the directions on the Lesson 10 homepage to discuss the following scenario.
Scenario:
You are developing a Web site about cooperative learning. The research by Johnson and Johnson is important and influential in this field. You'd like to copy some of the techniques they present in one of their books. On reading the book, you discover that they use these techniques during workshops. The biographical sketch in the book says that they have presented these workshops as consultants around the world.
Can you copy this material about their techniques to your Web site without obtaining their permission? If so, describe two ways you might be able to do this (i.e., two ways to make your use acceptable according to the Fair Use criteria.).