Civil and criminal penalties may be imposed for copyright infringement. (See Copyright Basics Tutorial). While under some circumstances educators are not required to pay statutory damages (Section 304(c)), they may be responsible for paying the copyright owners actual damages caused by their infringement, as well as attorney's fees, court costs, etc.
Yes, because knowing about the law, and having accurate resources available help in determining when a use needs permission. An excellent site for learning fair use is the following:
Georgia
Harper, Esq.,
Office of General Counsel, University of Texas
Fair
Use of Copyrighted Materials
or Copyright
Crash Course
Another excellent site for learning about fair use is
Copyright and Fair Use Site Stanford University Libraries
There are 3 sets of guidelines for educational uses at nonprofit educational institutions voted on by Congress (print, music, off-air videotaping) and 1 set of guidelines accepted by Congress but not voted upon (multimedia).
http://www.oit.cmich.edu/it/policies_multi_fairuse.asp
Yes. The law changes fairly often and court cases are important. Bills are introduced every year. Do not rely solely on books on copyright or copyright Web sites which are even a few years old for copyright information. While much good information can be found there, more up to date resources must be consulted as well. See Stanford University's Web site for keeping track of current legislation.
For researching copyright you may wish to contact the Copyright Office for a search. There are also Web sites for accessing lists of out-of-print books, such as Abebooks, a network of independent booksellers or the Internet edition of Bowker's Books Out-of-Print (for books out of print since 1979), which carrying over forty million books. Subscription rates are available for one week or more or the print version can be consulted in most libraries.
The CCC is a nonprofit organization established in 1971 to become the largest and only not-for-profit provider of licensing/permissions services in the U.S. It has expanded each year to add more materials (1.75 million works), services, and different types of media. See MIRA below for photographs, illustrations, cartoons, etc. Located at 222 Rosewood Drive Danvers, MA 01923 (508)750-8400).
Services include:
In addition to MIRA there are others for cartoon permissions and licensing. An excellent source would be:
Andrews McMeel Universal/Universal Press Syndicate
This site handles reprints, licensing, and other requests and has guidelines for this purpose.
The excellent chart below provides guidance on when a work has entered the public domain. When copyright lapses for a work it falls into the public domain and the copyright can not be retrieved. Because of the extension of the copyright term in the Sonny Bono Act (cited below) this site is very useful to those researching copyright. In addition, the Copyright Office has an information line on which trained professionals provide copyright information and they can perform copyright registration searches to determine if a work is still copyrighted.
This information is on their Web site, previously cited. Laura Gasaway, J.D. M.L.S. "When works pass into the public domain"; Public domain chart which has been updated for the Term Extension Act, P.L. 105-298
Edu@onelist.com or http://www.onelist.com/subscribe/copyright.edu. Mailing list restricted to subscribers whose e-mail ends in .edu. As of this writing there are 36 members of the group.
There are many sites with images, some are copyrighted and some are not. In addition, there are excellent government resources with public domain images, such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress, etc. These sites will have a .gov as their domain, although not all sites with this domain have public domain materials. There are exceptions. Some search engines, such as Goto. com, Alta Vista.com, etc., have image search functions and there are image-only search engines, as well. Caveat: Just because a click of the mouse can copy an image from the Web does not mean that it should be copied. These copies are intended, in many cases, for at-home use. Read the legend or rights information on the Home Page first to see what uses can be made of these images. If the intent is to use the image on the Web, when in doubt, leave it out.
Tools for Searching Image Files
http://www.kidsclick.org/psearch.html
Excellent! This is the most complete image search site on the web. Check
usage terms for each site.
http://www.google.com
This is an excellent site general interest images. Each image has copyright
information, image size, type, etc. The "advanced search" function
provides ways to eliminate unwanted topics and narrow the search.
http://www.digitaljuice.com/index.asp
This site has many royalty free graphics, images, and animations.
Subscription is required. This site has many images which are for sale
on a nominal basis.
http://camt.nyfa.org/artsites/
Excellent listing of different types of sites and pictures by category.
http://school.discovery.com/clipart
There are many general use images available on this site. The
terms of use for clip art for web sites are provided.
http://www.nasa.gov/
There are several sections to this site, many of which are in the public
domain, such as NASA TV.
http://nix.larc.nasa.gov/
The images in this section are not copyrighted. See the "copyright" section for terms and conditions of use.
http://www.nasa.gov/gallery/index.html
This section of the site has photo, video, audio, and arts galleries.
The material is in the public domain unless otherwise noted on each section.
The site states "Most NASA images are in the public domain." See the conditions for using the NASA emblem, as well.
http://www.archives.gov/
NARA's holdings include presidential materials, congressional materials,
textual records, electronic records, film, video, and sound records, photographs,
government documents and selected topics, such as the Holocaust, Watergate,
and more.
http://www.askjeeves.com
Ask a specific question, such as "Holocaust pictures". There will be many
sources here.
Image Fair Use Examples with permission from Kodak
Acceptable noncommercial, private purpose: use as a screen saver on your personal computer only use on personal documents (such as school assignments) printing out hard copies for personal use (such as wall art) for learning how to use imaging software applications NOT Acceptable noncommercial, private purpose: use on a Web site (even a personal home page) use on newsletters or brochures use as packaging or advertising resale as part of a collection of digital images making screen savers for resale or redistribution use as background art for any Internet or Web-based system;
There are many excellent sites with links to performing rights societies in the U.S. and elsewhere. The best site to link to other sites for music permissions is the Kohn site: Kohn on Music Licensing Bob, Al, and Matt Kohn host this site and Bob and Matt (sons) are attorneys. This excellent site, hosted by many years by the Kohns, has many useful resources and links. Recent reports and books, a question and answer section, links to music rights clearance organizations, music performing rights societies (national and international), mechanical rights societies and collection agencies, music publisher organizations, songwriter organizations, other music industry associations, etc.
A good place to begin the search for public domain music is "Music in the Public Domain"
This is a reference site to use when researching music as to whether or
not it is in the public domain. It has a song list of 3,000 public domains
songs, information on proving public domain status, identifying useable
public domain works, how to use Web search engines to research individual
song titles, research sites, resources for finding public domain music
and information on fair use, etc.
While there is an enormous number of Web sites for music on the Internet, this listing for music sites is selective because in some cases these sites have found that the music placed on their sites in good faith was pirated. Some of these sites state that the music placed on them is copyrighted and intended for personal use. Placing this music on a CD for a course or on a Web site would not be allowed, for example, under most circumstances. Read the restrictions on each of the Home Pages before proceeding and then still proceed with caution. This situation is particularly true for wav sites, which have high number of pirated songs. Midi music is also often copyrighted. It is synthesized music. MP3 sites are not included in this list because of the great amount of pirated music on them.
A large repository or choral music, hymns, carols, etc. Some of them may require a CPDL open source license.
Excellent site for music. It has wav, mids, archives, links, and a search engine. Much of the music is copyrighted.
This site searches several major search engines (Alta Vista, Hotbot, etc.) for midi files.
This site has an extensive number of midi files with over 30,000 links with recommended pages and a quick search function.
Selected music resources and the internet
This site has links to many music collections, as well as scholarly resources.
Audiovisual clearances from television, motion pictures, etc., is much harder than other media. A separate article could appear on the resources in this area, alone, because there are so many individual resources to be contacted for television shows, videos, etc. However, there are a few basic resources that can help. Television Some basic information can be received by making a phone call to the local station, whether it is for local or national affiliate programs (ABC, F0X, etc.).
A good place to start is with a good book location tool. However, an excellent Web site that has many resources is below:
This excellent resource for television shows, categorized by station, topic, geographical regions, etc., also has industry guides resource links, and is searchable.
Stock, archival, and news footage network for educational and professional use.
This site can be searched by news program (20/20, World News Tonight, PrimeTime, and This Week) and other programs. Videos and transcripts can be ordered from it.
Searchable by news program and topic, this site also provides tapes and transcripts.
Searchable by topic, 70 years of news is available in quicktime or realvideo format.
While there are many resources available for motion pictures and videos, including the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), for educational use perhaps the best resource to begin with is below:
University of California at Berkeley Media Resources Center Video Distributor Database. This excellent online resource has several areas, a searchable and browseable database is available by distributor's name, type of distribution method (theatrical, documentary, education, performance, etc.), this is an excellent online resource. links to other distributor and video indexes, including mail order, footage resources, etc.
Excellent resource to locate movies, stars, topics, etc. Searchable on many subjects, it is the most complete guide on the Internet.
for multimedia, videos, images, and Internet-based media. Services, links, client list, etc. are on this site.
(MPLC) Home use videocassettes can be legally shown in public with their umbrella license. Other services are available.
Perhaps the best place to begin a permissions location collection is with this one source below:
Motion Picture & Television Reading Room Library of Congress This is an excellent guide to purchasing and using video selection tools.
Samual French, Inc. A play publisher and authors representative since 1830, as well as a source for classroom guides, monologues, etc., it has a large stock.
An excellent guide for finding cable listings is the one below: CIC Online Cable in the Classroom This excellent resource, which also has a magazine, is searchable by title, genre, description, sub-genre, and text, as well as for closed caption titles. The user can ask about fair use, permission/licensing for 1 year or better or free as categories.
There are several guides which provide program information, for all types
or for specific ones, such as C & K Band.
Fair use does not apply to satellite programs and producer permissions
vary. These resources are in print format but have Web sites for subscription
information.
It has grid listings, resources, archives, etc., in its weekly print magazine.
This excellent site includes several sound search tools, although opinions on quality and usability vary with the topic. Check usage terms for each site, since not all sites have public domain music and/or sound.