Copyright and Intellectual Property

Faculty teaching online courses face the exciting prospect of designing, maintaining, and conducting courses in an ever-developing medium. While this medium opens new, unlimited opportunities, it also poses many questions about how to present materials to students within the legal parameters of copyright laws.

Copyright laws Links to an external site. exist in the United States to protect the rights of the creators of original works such as novels, films, musical works, photographs, etc. The laws grant the copyright owner the exclusive rights to reproduce, create a derivative work, distribute, perform, and display the copyrighted material. In addition, the copyright owner can determine who is authorized to use the work. Copyright is automatic once the work is captured in a fixed format (e.g., text or recording), and the copyright symbol is not required in order to signify that the work has been copyrighted.

Intro Fair Use

The Fair Use doctrine is a provision of copyright law designed to allow the limited use of copyrighted work without the copyright owner's permission. It was developed with education in mind and is specifically applicable to teaching, research, scholarship, comment, criticism, or news reporting.

Four specific factors must be considered in each instance to determine if Fair Use applies. Each of the four factors must be applied and weighed together to make a case for Fair Use:

  • The purpose must be for non-profit, educational use
  • Nature of the material used (factual vs. fictional)
  • Amount of material used (the percentage of a work used in relation to the whole)
  • Effect on the current market as well as the future, potential market, or value of the work

When including portions of copyrighted materials under the Fair Use guidelines, you must identify the following information for each piece:

  1. The source from which the material was taken
  2. The copyright holder
  3. Year of the material's publication
  4. Copyright notice ( i.e., the '©' symbol)

Review the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia Download Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia provided by the legal department at UCF. These pages provide common copyright questions and answers that you are most likely to encounter while teaching online. (Note: This is a UCF specific work sample to be adapted and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Links to an external site.)

The key to successfully navigating these guidelines is to know and understand your rights and responsibilities as an online instructor. The safest course of action is to always request permission to use a work. 

 

Resources Copyright Strategies & Best Practices

  • Link to Existing Websites.
    • Linking to materials on the Internet from your course's website is allowable. Since you are only pointing to materials and not copying or displaying those materials, you are not infringing copyright law. 
  • Utilize Electronic Resources in the your institution's library.
  • Empower your Students.
    • Use active learning strategies and ask students to locate online resources and have them incorporate these resources into a presentation, digital poster, or share them in an online discussion. 
  • Search for materials that are openly licensed, in the public domain, or copyright-free.  
    • More information is provided about Open Educational Resources later in this module.
  • Include a Copyright Notice in your Syllabus.
    • Consider including a copyright statement in your syllabus to inform students there may be copyright-protected materials in your course that should not be copied, duplicated, or downloaded. A sample copyright statement is included in the Syllabus template available in this LMS course.
  • Ask for permission to use content in your online course.
    • If you want to display, perform, or distribute something copyrighted, the safest course of action is to obtain permission (in writing) from the owner. Many faculty are granted permission to use materials upon their first request.
    • Create a folder in the Files area of your course to store copyright permissions. This will help you organize this information by course and will be easy to locate if you need to access it for some reason.
    • If you cannot obtain copyright permission, seek an alternative solution by exploring the resources listed above. 
      • If you really feel that you want to use this copyrighted work, you may see if the doctrine of fair use applies to your situation.
  • Consider sharing your own work openly with a Creative Commons license Links to an external site..

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