How copyright and fair use apply in an online world have long been issues that have confounded me? I think I have found an explanation that seems logical to me, but then find some “expert” advocating a practice that I would regard as an infringement. I think I understand “fair use” as it applies in my face to face classroom or to materials I might provide students. I understood that fair use did not apply to materials I might offer others online. This made some sense to me based on my experience being associated with a commercial product – I knew that if I wanted to use an image in our book the responsible individuals had to provide permission. Online was “publishing” whether the product was paid for or not.
The 2002 TEACH act seemed consistent with this perspective. It authorized online behaviors similar to classroom behaviors as long as those with access were enrolled students and efforts were made to exclude others (e.g, a sign-in CMS). This seemed logical. In addition, the act itself seemed unnecessary if my interpretation of online fair use was wrong.
EDUCAUSE has recently released a “research report” on copyright and fair use in a web 2.0 world. I thought this would make it clear that my interpretation was overly strict which is what the report says educators tend to do. I even thought I found the page on which my answer existed (page 9).
I interpreted this to mean my existing interpretation was overly cautious – I might use an occasional image or short segment of music as such would meet fair use guidelines in my classroom and it would seem I could do the same on a web page.
I read on (unfortunately).
In discussing making lectures available to any interested party as is being done by many institutions via iTunes U, the authors state:
Am I wrong about fair use, I would regard using a scan of a single image from the textbook in a powerpoint slide as fair use. If this is true, the experts authoring this EDUCAUSE article appear to have contradicted themselves (perhaps reversed themselves) within the span of three paragraphs.
What are the options here? This still makes little sense to me.
