[Disclaimer: The information provided on this page is provided for
student guidance only and should not be construed as legal advice. Copyright
and fair use questions are inherently fact-specific and must be addressed
on a case-by-case basis. Questions from the university community about
copyright law may be addressed to the Office
of the General Counsel.]
Copyright law is intended to protect the intellectual property rights of authors while facilitating the use of their work in the purpose of creating new work. If I write a book, for example, on the mating habits of giraffes, I have the right to receive royalties from the sale of the book, but my readers have the unrestricted right to draw upon my ideas in devising their own theories of mammalian courtship behavior. In the words of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, "copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work."1
Anyone who creates an original work, whether it is a term paper, a novel,
a website, a photograph, or a musical composition, automatically owns
the copyright to that work. Others may freely borrow ideas from that work
and even reproduce parts of it within an original work of their own, but
they are generally not permitted to reproduce the work in its entirety
or use it in any fashion that undermines the commercial viability of the
copyrighted work. This is why it is legal to quote passages from a play
by Arthur Miller in an essay on contemporary drama, but would be illegal
to stage even an amateur production of the play without a license from
the copyright owner. This why it is also illegal to make "pirated" copies
of musical recordings or computer software: by reproducing the entire
work rather than buying one's own copy, one undermines the profitability
of the work and infringes the author's copyright.
In most cases, creating a multimedia web site involves "borrowing" a certain
amount of content (sounds, images, icons, quoted passages, etc.) from
other sources. In addition to providing full attribution for any such
borrowings in order to avoid the charge of plagiarism,
web authors must insure that their use of such materials does not violate
the copyright of their original creators. In general, it is safest to
assume that any image, text, or sound one finds on a website is copyrighted,
and should be treated accordingly.
The fair use provision of the copyright law provides guidelines for determining
whether a given use of copyrighted material is legitimate. It is the responsibility
of student authors to take these guidelines into account in determining
whether and how to incorporate copyrighted materials within their own
websites. The relevant statute reads as follows:
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The fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism,
comment, news reporting, teaching, . . . scholarship, or research,
is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the
use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors
to be considered shall include: |
In general, the incorporation of portions of copyrighted
works within student projects in an educational setting would be considered
a fair use. Quoting selected passages from a written work is not a problem,
nor is including illustrative excerpts from an audio recording. The case
of images is more complicated, but it is probably safe to assume that
reproducing up to two or three images from an artist's work would be acceptable
under the law. Note that including a musical work in its entirety or a
substantial number of a single visual artist's works would likely be deemed
a violation of copyright law.
It is essential, in any case, to credit properly the original source of
any copyrighted material incorporated in a web site. The attribution (which
should be included in an endnote) should provide a full bibliographic
description of the source, including author, title, publisher, and place
and date of publication. See the ECE page on Citing
Sources for details.
For further information about copyright law, fair use, and their implications
within an educational setting, please refer to the following two websites:
University of Michigan Copyright
Information Page: This site provides comprehensive information
on every aspect of copyright law and its interpretation as well as various
sets of guidelines for the fair use of copyrighted materials of various
kinds.
Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia: This site lays out
a widely accepted framework for the interpretation of fair use that is
particularly relevant to the case of student web projects. According to
the introduction, the "purpose of these guidelines is to provide guidance
on the application of fair use principles by educators, scholars and students
who develop multimedia projects using portions of copyrighted works under
fair use rather than by seeking authorization for non-commercial educational
uses."
1. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Feist Publications, Inc. vs. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 US 340, 349 (1991).
