Copyright Information & Guidelines

When you want to present any form of visual media, whether it be as part of a course, at a group or club activity, at an organization event, or as a training exercise, you have to consider the rights of the those who own the copyright to the work you want to use. In most cases however, fair use would allow for the use of audio content for educational purposes. Below is guidance on permissible uses of copyrighted content in teaching, research, and scholarship.

If such use is intended outside of the classroom, such as at a group or club activity or at an organization event, then Public Performance Rights will need to be obtained.

The following are guidelines that are often cited as ideal tools with which to measure the use of images or visual elements in course-related instruction or scholarship. These guidelines both use the concepts of brevity, spontaneity and cumulative effect to illustrate what may or may not be a fair use. They suggest numerical limits as the minimum standards of educational fair use.

The following are the primary conditions outlined in the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, developed by the Consortium of College and University Media Centers.

Recently, several organizations have published Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use that relate specifically to the educational use of images and visual elements. Below is one such code that addresses the specific research and pedagogical needs of visual literacy and should be consulted when appropriate and in concert with previously established guidelines to facilitate a thorough evaluation of the use of copyrighted multimedia content.

The following situational guidelines are excerpted from the Statement of the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study and should be used in conjunction with classroom guidelines to inform decisions regarding the use of copyrighted media:

Preservation: Storing Images for Repeated Use in a Teaching Context; Transferring Images to New Formats

PRINCIPLE: Preservation of such materials – as a means of facilitating teaching, research and study, and preserving the scholarly record – should generally be permissible as an exercise of educators’ fair use rights.

SUGGESTIONS: Educational users may be best positioned to assert fair use if they:

• Make only that number of copies reasonably necessary to achieve the teaching and research needs of the institution or individual (as well as the associated needs in preserving that content for such purposes). Such copies can include copies that are readily accessible for teaching and research purposes, as well as those that may be placed in a “dark” – or typically inaccessible – archive.

• Undertake good faith efforts to notify end users of the archive, preferably through click-through terms of use or other mechanisms, that copyrighted images in the archive are only being made available for the educational uses for which the archive was assembled. Although terms of use and similar mechanisms are not a requirement of fair use, such mechanisms are likely to be viewed by courts as an indication of an educational user’s good faith in asserting fair use.

Use of Images for Teaching Purposes

PRINCIPLE: For the reasons described in this statement, the reproduction and use of images for teaching – whether in face-to-face teaching, non-synchronous teaching activities, or non-course related academic lectures – should be consistent with fair use.

SUGGESTIONS: Educational institutions and faculty reproducing, displaying, or providing access to, images for teaching purposes may be best positioned to rely on fair use if they:

• Undertake good faith efforts when distributing images to individual users to notify those users – preferably in writing through click-through terms of use or similar mechanisms – that copyrighted images are being made available for teaching, study, and research only. Although terms of use are not a requirement of fair use, such mechanisms may indicate an educational user’s good faith in asserting fair use.

• Consider employing access restrictions, to the extent that images are accessible through websites or other online resources that limit access to educational users. Although access restrictions are not a requirement of fair use, they may be useful as a means of demonstrating a good faith intention to limit use of the images to teaching, research and study.

• Provide attributions to known copyright owners of the images (and any works depicted in the images). Although not legally required under fair use, such attributions may help demonstrate a user’s good faith in adhering to the broader scholarly traditions of providing citations when using others’ works.

• Maintain the educational, not-for-profit context, to the extent that educational institutions or faculty members utilize third parties (such as image-sharing websites and image databases) as a means of providing access to those images.

Use of Images (both Large, High-Resolution Images and Thumbnails) on Course Websites and in Other Online Study Materials

PRINCIPLE: To the extent that use of a specific image for teaching or research is a fair use, then placing those same images in course websites or in other interactive teaching media for the same purposes should also be fair. Such uses should be fair regardless of the media formats or resolution in which those materials appear. This is the case whether or not those materials remain within such sites or media on an ongoing basis, or on a shorter basis, so long as they continue to serve an educational or scholarly purpose.

SUGGESTIONS: Educational institutions or individual faculty members who are providing students and other individual users with direct access to copyrighted images through course websites or other electronic study materials may be best positioned to claim fair use if they:

• Undertake good faith efforts when distributing images to individual users to notify those users – preferably in writing through click-through terms of use or similar mechanisms – that copyrighted images are being made available for teaching, study, and research only. Although terms of use are not a requirement of fair use, such mechanisms may indicate an educational user’s good faith in asserting fair use.

• Consider employing access restrictions that limit access to educational users. Although access restrictions are not a requirement of fair use, they may be useful as a means of demonstrating a good faith intention to limit use of the images to teaching, research and study.

• Provide attributions to known copyright owners of the images (and any works depicted in the images). Although not legally required under fair use, such attributions may help demonstrate a user’s good faith in adhering to the broader scholarly traditions of providing citations when using others’ works.

• Maintain the educational, not-for-profit context, to the extent that educational institutions or faculty members utilize third parties (such as image-sharing websites and image databases) as a means of providing access to those images.

Adaptations of Images for Teaching and Classroom Work by Students

PRINCIPLE: Subject to specified conditions, adaptations of copyrighted images for purposes of study, research, and teaching – such as for course assignments – should fall within the doctrine of fair use. 

SUGGESTIONS: Educational users may be particularly well positioned to assert fair use in adapting copyrighted images if they:

• Clearly use the work in a learning, research, or similar educational context. 

• Consider employing access restrictions as noted in the third guideline above, to the extent that such adaptations are being distributed via course websites or similar online vehicles. Although not a requirement of fair use, such steps may demonstrate a good faith intention to limit use of the images to teaching, research and study 

• Provide an indication of the educational context in accompanying descriptive materials, to the extent that adaptations are displayed beyond the classroom (e.g., in an end-of-semester exhibition).