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The idea of universal access to research, education, and culture is made possible by the Internet, but our legal and social systems don’t always allow that idea to be realized. Copyright was created long before the emergence of the Internet, and can make it hard to legally perform actions we take for granted on the network: copy, paste, edit source, and post to the Web. The default setting of copyright law requires all of these actions to have explicit permission, granted in advance, whether you’re an artist, teacher, scientist, librarian, policymaker, or just a regular user. To achieve the vision of universal access, someone needed to provide a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. That someone is Creative Commons.

Fortunately, the Copyright Act contains a special exception for educational uses of copyrighted materials. Under w

hat is known as the"fair use" rule, someone other than the copyright owner may make limited use of a copyrighted work w

ithout permission for purposes such as teaching, research, scholarship, criticism, parody and news reporting.

There are three major exceptions to the copyright law that permit instructors to use copyrighted material in their classrooms without permission.

The Association of Research Libraries offers a concise and clear brochure, Know Your Copyrights, that stresses multiple opportunities to use copyrighted materials in the classroom

Copyright laws do allow teachers some uses of some copyrighted materials. Fair use guidelines consider: The purpose of the use (educational vs. commercial) The nature of the work (published and fact-based vs. highly creative) The amount of the work used The market effect of the use on the work.

The educational exemption applies if:The copyrighted material is used in a classroom or school library.The material is used as a part of face-to-face instruction with students. A teacher must be in charge and the material must relate directly to the subject being taught. The amount of the work used is only as much as is required for this lesson.The material must be legally acquired. (Purchased, rented, or borrowed from a library.)