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A discussion with Kenneth Crews of Columbia University about copyright. It opens with a nice primer on the concepts of copyright and fair use, and takes an interesting turn at the end as the discussants consider the ownership of faculty and staff copyrights, and Creative Commons licensing.

Educators rely on the fair use of copyrighted material heavily - but not always with a clear grasp of what "fair use" really is as a legal principle. The Copyright Office has released a new tool for exploring case law on fair use; this article looks at the usefulness of the tool, and its limitations.

Educators rely on the fair use of copyrighted material heavily - but not always with a clear grasp of what "fair use" really is as a legal principle. The Copyright Office has released a new tool for exploring case law on fair use; this article looks at the usefulness of the tool, and its limitations.

This is a pretty good online course for introducing academics to relevant issues in copyright law. The lectures are given by experts in the field, and are appropriately accessible and detailed. It's now available "on demand"; I'm curious to see how people experience that differently than the earlier synchronous (multi-week) iteration.

This blog post is the most recent by Kenneth Crews (as of May 8, 2014) covering the Georgia State University case, which is currently on appeal to the 11th Circuit Court. The decision in this case was a significant "victory" for proponents of academic fair use as the judge sought to clarify the limitations and exceptions that constitute fair use, and she essentially rejected the formerly strictly imposed classroom guidelines as well as the "one-time use" limitation.

This is a useful starting point for exploring current news and activity in educational copyright issues and how fair use is being applied. Recent court cases are covered in the blog postings.

Other possible tags: Roy_Orbison and Nude_Models During a recent demonstration of software for creating video clips from DVDs the subject of copyright naturally arose. I shared some notes on copyright that I took while watching a webinar that highlighted the court decision in the Georgi State U. case in May. This article fits in nicelywith this thread of a conversation in that it illustrates the touchy/controversial nature of what exactly is meant by the term "transformative."

This tool by the Copyright Advisory Network of the American Library Association should help you understand and evaluate the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code. The tool will document your efforts to determine fairness of the use and create a time-stamped pdf document for your records. (NOTE: I have not actually officially used this tool, but I plan to do so.)

After the Georgia State University ruling came down in 2012 Educause offered a live, interactive webinar featuring Kenneth Crews, one of the leading experts in the area of copyright law and educational fair use. Crews is (was) the director of the Copyright Advisory Office of the Columbia University Libraries. This page provides resources from the webinar, including a recording. However, this recording is of poor quality, especially the final 1/3 of the recording.

The judge's decision in the copyright suit by publishers against Georgia State University has significant areas which need clarification, and it uses a mechanical principle for determining the amount of a work which can be copied as fair use, but it is generally a pro-education ruling. Of course, it will probably be appealed.

An overview of fair use presented by the Stanford (University) Copyright and Fair Use Center. This link is to the first page of a four page "spread" on fair use that covers: definitions; how to apply the four factors; summaries of significant cases; and a discussion of disagreements over what constitutes fair use and whether one is likely to get sued or not.

This is the ARL's document on how to best apply fair use.

A discussion of the meaning and practical interpretation by recent courts of the term "transformative." Folks in the fields of literature, music, and visual arts will find synopses of recent cases covering the specific application of the law with respect to their media. While not necessarily of direct importance to academicians in the classroom, these synopses should be of interest to anyone (faculty and students) who produce outside of the classroom.

This episode of NPR's Planet Money presents a good case study in applying the 4-factor fair use test. The topic is web sites which present song lyrics. In specific, they look at a site called RapGenius, which makes a "transformative use" case by providing a site where users can annotate and explicate lyrics. (Despite the name, the site includes any genre of music as well as poetry, prose, and news.) RapGenius also has an education program for faculty who want to use it as a classroom tool for close reading exercises.

This is the VRA's statement on how fair use of still images can be applied in many instances in an educational setting. Such instances include use by teachers in lessons and by students in transforming a work for an assignment (among others).

Interesting analyses of the appeals court reversal of the decision in the Georgia State University case on electronic reserves. Multiple analysts find that the higher court did affirm significant parts of the decision which expand fair use.