Deciding
whether your use of copyrighted material is legal or not is not always easy. There are many parameters at play such as the nature of the work,
amount of work to be used, setting in which the work will be used, purpose of
the use, and so on. It is not possible to know all the copyright laws for
everyone and make an informed decision based on these laws. However, there are
tools to assist us with our decision to (or not) use a copyrighted work. Copyright
Advisory Network (http://librarycopyright.net)
has brought some tools together which will help individuals, instructors, and
librarians to decide whether their use can be considered legal or within the
fair use domain. For example, The Copyright
Genie tool will allow you to find out if a work is covered by U.S.
copyright laws. Another tool that is called Fair Use Evaluator,
arguably the most useful tool, helps to establish whether your use of a
copyrighted work is a “fair use.” In this tool, you will need to provide some
contextual information about your intended use, describe how your use relates
to each of the four fair use factors that are purpose, nature, amount, and
effect. In each factor, the tool provides example situations that favor or
oppose fair use, so you can make a more informed decision by selecting any
situation that applies to your use. Finally, you can color code your entries as
to how comfortable you are in terms of your use of a copyrighted material
whether it is fair or infringing. Fair Use Evaluator tool seems like a very
helpful assistant when deciding to use copyrighted work in educational
settings.
The other tools
available are Section
108 Spinner, Exceptions
for Instructors eTool, and Public Domain
Slider.
