TLP Blog

Frequently faculty come to TLP with course materials they want to add to their Vista course section and ask us how it falls into the boundaries of copyright and fair use. Generally we refer them to a checklist developed by CSU, Chico librarian, James Tyler. This checklist is an excellent tool to quickly determine if the materials are eligible for upload.

Another tool faculty can use is an online resource developed by Stanford. The Stanford web page, Copyright & Fair use – Charts and Tools, provides excellent evaluation resources for multi-media content, digital images and fair use. Recently Stanford added a new tool to its Charts and Tools page, the “Section 108 Spinner” which can help libraries determine if reproductions of copyrighted materials fall under the exemption.

Free for a Fee, a blog written to supplement Edward Lee Lamoureux’s new book,
Intellectual Property Law and Interactive Media: Free for a Fee, also an excellent resource for faculty and students seeking more information about intellectual property updates.

EDUCAUSE Live!
January 13, 2009 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. PT
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“Copyright balancing has become a critical issue in the academy as digital practices increasingly have challenged creaky policies and practices. Scholars, academic administrators, librarians, and intellectuals, as well as their students and mentees, need reasonable access to copyrighted culture to research and produce new knowledge. They and their distributors, whether journal publishers or YouTube, need to be able to share work that references and quotes copyrighted material without going through clearance processes never designed for this sector.”
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It’s become easier than ever for faculty to use and show online video in their courses with learning management systems like Blackboard. In TLP we can assist faculty in creating their own online video as well as editing existing video to create new illustrative materials for students to watch online. However, the questions of “what am I allowed to do?” or “what’s the best way to use this YouTube video?” are never far from our thoughts, and it’s hard to sort through the legal, technical and social issues to determine good teaching practice in each case.  

To that end, the Center for Social Media at the American University School of Communication has released the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video in both web and PDF format. Authored by a team of legal and media scholars from across the country, this excellent resource can help creators and users of copyrighted online media better understand what are good practices for using this media in the context of education, discussion, illustration, critique, research, commentary, memorialization, and much more. The guide also also dispels a fair number of Fair Use myths, such as “If I’m making any money off it, it’s not fair use.”

Get the guide here.  

The Center for Social Media also has a guide to Public Domain works called “Yes, You Can!” which is worth checking out, as are their News and Blogs RSS feeds. 

The Kansas City TV Barn blog is featuring an interview with one of the authors of the Code of Best Practices and also offers a 13-minute podcast about Fair Use in “mashups” – that is, a juxtaposition of two or more media materials to create something new (music, video, web application, or whatever). 

Adding imagery to your course material and Vista pages can enhance teaching and engage students, but it can be difficult to know where to find images which are legally free to use. James Tyler, electronic resource librarian, will demonstrate how to find truly free high-quality images from licensed, public and private sources and web sites such as Flickr; he will discuss fair use and copyright issues. Peter DiFalco, TLP consultant, will help you learn to manipulate images to fit your course material or to use as icons for Vista. To RSVP email Laura Sederberg. Read the flyer for more information.