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Legal limitations on web publication |
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Laws govern the incorporation of copyrighted materials with our own original materials for educational purposes. We must identify and follow fair use guidelines1 in a conscientious attempt to guard our own legal positions, as well as those of our school district. Fair use guidelines that permit the limited use of copyrighted materials in multimedia projects for face-to-face presentation in our classrooms do not allow publication of those projects on the web. Permission granted for use of copyrighted materials in classroom presentations does not extend to online publication of those materials. Web publication2 is distribution on a wide scale, which extends far beyond the exemptions to the Copyright Law granted to teachers for educational purposes. It almost certainly extends beyond the permission for use that we are sometimes able to obtain. Web publication of copyrighted materials can provide evidence of copyright infringement. Teachers are well advised to develop materials published on the web themselves. Quiz questions posted on a teacher web site cannot include questions copied from a textbook. Documents presenting lecture notes must be developed by the teacher, not copied from a copyrighted source. We must know the original source of materials obtained from other teachers to prevent inadvertent copyright infringement. Permission for use granted to one teacher does not automatically extend to another. We must be able to discern which materials are in the public domain3 so that their use is unrestricted and which materials are copyrighted so that their publication on the web is almost certainly unacceptable. We must know how to appropriately credit materials developed by our colleagues, lawfully incorporated in our own materials, and perhaps published on the web with their permission. 1 University of Texas System: Fair Use Guidelines
for Educational Multimedia
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