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    By: CC Open Textbook CollaborativeAs a part of collection: "Introduction to Open Educational Resources"

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    By: Cheryl RichardsonAs a part of collection: "Introduction to Open Educational Resources"

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OER Fair Use, Copyright, and TEACH Act

Module by: Judy Baker. E-mail the author

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Summary: fair use

Lesson: Fair Use and Copyright

Lesson Components

  • Fast Fact
  • Skill/Objective
  • Success Indicators
  • Introduction
  • Activity
  • Review questions
  • Resources

Fast Fact

The copyright notice © is no longer required for works published after March 1989. Absence of notice does not necessarily mean the work is within the public domain.

Skills/Objectives

Learners will be able to:

  1. Define copyright, fair use, the TEACH Act, and intellectual property.

Success Indicators

Determine the appropriateness of their own use learning materials for OER in terms of fair use. Creative Commons license selected for learner's OER.

Introduction

A basic understanding of copyright, fair use, the TEACH Act, and intellectual property is necessary before using and developing OER in order to minimize the risk of violating the law. You are encouraged to visit one or more of the many online tutorials exist which address these topics.

Copyright

Fair Use

The fair use doctrine, as codified in §17 U.S.C. 107, sets forth four general factors to be considered when evaluating whether a proposed use of a copyrighted work is a fair use and thus, does not require permission from the copyright holder.

The four factors are:

  1. What is the purpose of the proposed use?
  2. What is the nature of the copyright work to be used?
  3. How much of the copyrighted work will be used?
  4. What is the effect on the market or potential market for the copyrighted work?

TEACH Act

The TEACH Act is updates copyright law for digital online education as a compromise effort to address the copyright restriction disparities between digital classroom and the traditional classroom in terms of performances and displays. TEACH Toolkit provides checklists and a “best practices” as well as basic information. Under the Teach Act, faculty can use copyrighted material in their online courses without seeking the author's permission under the following circumstances:

  • The college must be accredited and nonprofit.
  • The college must have an internal policy on use of copyrighted material and on copyright law.
  • The college must provide printed or online resources for faculty members that describe their rights and responsibilities under copyright law.
  • The material must not have been originally intended for educational use.
  • The material must have been lawfully acquired
  • The material must be an integral part of the class session.
  • Reasonable precautions must be made to restrict access to the copyrighted content to students enrolled in the course.
  • Other reasonable controls must be used to prevent students from disseminating the material after viewing it.
  • If a digital version of the material is readily available for use at the institution, then the instructor cannot convert an analog version to digital form for use in an online course.
  • The college must inform students that the material may be protected by copyright law.

Intellectual Property

Watch the video introduction to Creative Commons (CC). CC is a nonprofit organization that provides authors with(free tools to manage their intellectual property. A CC license allows others to reproduce a licensed work when they give credit to the license holder. The CC website has a tool that generates licenses (in HTML format) based on chosen criteria.  Educause provides good summary of 7 Things Series You Should Know About Creative Commons

 

Activity

Experience

  1. Watch Dr. No Returns! is a video clip in which an instructor would like to use the TEACH Act to provide music from various sources to a "History of Music" course through a password protected web site.
  2. Use Checklist for the TEACH Act to determine whether or not your planned use of learning materials are suitable as OER is in compliance with the TEACH Act.
  3. Use one of the EduSource Canada Public Domain Wizard to determine if the learning materials you plan to use are in the public domain.
  4. Use Checklist for Fair Use to determine whether or not your planned use of learning materials are suitable as OER in terms of fair use.

Reflect

  1. Once you have joined OER Commons, make your own posting to the OER Matters Discussions area. Click on OER Matters Intellectual Property Forum to answer the following question:

"At the core of OER use and re-use are legal issues surrounding the sharing, use, and re-use of OER as a way to sustain and grow the OER movement. How does the shift from proprietary to participatory impact OER?"

Apply

  1. Choose an OER License for learning materials you might develop and share.
  2. Read about how intellectual property and fair use impact decisions to publish scholarly works at Connexions. Decide if you want to contribute to Connexions.

Review Questions

  1. What is fair use?
  2. What is the TEACH Act?
  3. How do fair use and the TEACH Act apply to the use of OER in your teaching?

Content actions

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E-mail the module author | Rate module ( How does the rating system work?)

Rating system

Ratings

Ratings allow you to judge the quality of modules. If other users have ranked the module then its average rating is displayed below. Ratings are calculated on a scale from one star (Poor) to five stars (Excellent).

How to rate a module

Hover over the star that corresponds to the rating you wish to assign. Click on the star to add your rating. Your rating should be based on the quality of the content. You must have an account and be logged in to rate content.

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| A lens I own (?)

Definition of a lens

Lenses

A lens is a custom view of Connexions content. You can think of it as a fancy kind of list that will let you see Connexions through the eyes of organizations and people you trust.

What is in a lens?

Lens makers point to Connexions materials (modules and collections), creating a guide that includes their own comments and descriptive tags about the content.

Who can create a lens?

Any individual Connexions member, a community, or a respected organization.

What are tags? tag icon

Tags are descriptors added by lens makers to help label content, attaching a vocabulary that is meaningful in the context of the lens.

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