Copyright+&+Fair+Use

** Copyright and Fair Use Information and Links **
As a student, you must model ethics. One of the most important skills in using the Internet is to know how to use it ethically. The ethical use of the Internet is often called digital citizenship. Part of being a digital citizen means that you are aware of copyrights on Internet images and music.

 Educators and students have a "fair use" to most Internet images as long as the images are used solely for educational purposes and not for commercial (profitable) purposes. Additionally, the image should not be altered in any way and attribute should be always given to the image creator or, alternatively, to the source where you found the image (if you can't identify the author).

 Educators and students also have "fair use" to copyright music. So if you were creating a digital story or multimedia presentation, you can legally use up to 10% of a musical composition in print, sound, or multimedia form. However, there are plenty of royalty free music sites on the Internet which allow you to legally use entire songs. Sites like www.freeplaymusic.com and @http://www.royaltyfreemusic.com/free-music-resources.html offer a variety of musical genres. A simple Google search will help you identify other such sites. Please remember that even when you use royalty free music or "free music" you should still cite the musician(s) name(s) if given.

 When searching for images, go to Flickr.com/creativecommons. Creative Commons spells out exactly how an image can be used and how attributes should be given. In order to be completely sure and safe with copyright - I recommend starting your Flickr searches in the Creative Commons area of the Flickr site. Go to the following links for Creative Commons' Flickr images:


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 Another category of images and created works is called "Public Domain." Images and music becomes part of the "Public Domain" in three ways:  1. works published over 75 years ago  2. work belonging to the public as a whole--government documents and works -you can find a lot of such images on this website:  Library of Congress - American Memory: []  3.works with an expired copyright or no existing protection

 Please be sure that you are careful when using images from search engines like Google Images. There is an important caveat. If you search Google Images, there are a lot of images there which do have a copyright. Yet, since Google is just a search engine, it doesn't always spell out which images have a copyright and which do not, so it usually goes with a generic line like, "there may be a copyright associated with this image." In that case you have to do a some homework to find out if the image does have a copyright. Of course this takes extra time, but it is an important part of being a digital citizen.

Please see the following "fair use" guides for more information regarding copyrights on images and music:


 * [|http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm]
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 * The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education