Copyright Guidelines for Multimedia

Copyright in Multimedia

Rules of Thumb

1. Students and teachers who produce multimedia works for educational purposes may use small portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works with proper credit to the source and the copyright owner.
   
   Students and teachers can use:
   1. Ten percent or three minutes of motion media.
   2. Ten percent or 1000 words of text materials.
   3. Five images by an artist or photographer or 10 percent or15 images from a collective work.
   4. Ten percent or 2500 fields or cell entries from a copyrighted database or data table.
   5. Ten percent or 30 seconds of music and lyrics from one work or from several extracts from one work.
      
2. Student-produced multimedia works may be performed and displayed for educational purposes in the course for which they were created; students may retain multimedia works in a portfolio for later personal use such as job or graduate school interviews.
   
3. Faculty-produced multimedia works may be performed and displayed for educational purposes for a period of up to two years following the date of first instructional use with a class; faculty may retain multimedia works in a portfolio for later personal use such as job or tenure interviews.
   
4. Student- and faculty-produced multimedia works may be performed and displayed at open houses, in-service workshops, and professional conferences.
   
5. Student- and faculty-produced multimedia works must contain an opening screen “fair use” statement. The source(s) and owner(s) of copyrighted work(s) must be properly credited.
   
6. The preparation of educational multimedia projects incorporating copyrighted works under the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia are subject to time, portion, copying and distribution limits.

Take a Copyright Quiz!

In this quiz you will be asked a series of 12 True or False questions. Select ANSWER and you will be shown the correct answer along with a brief explanation of why the answer is correct. To proceed to the next question select NEXT.

Copyright Quiz on Multimedia

Washburn University Resources

Additional Resources

American DE Consortium: Fair Use Guidelines For Educational Multimedia
CCUMC: Copyright Initiatives
CONFU: The Conference on Fair Use