Copyright Guidelines for Multimedia
Current technology has made it easy to
combine many different media, putting multimedia developers at risk of
copyright infringement. Because various forms of artistic expression are
combined in multimedia works, the legal issues of copyright are very complex.
Text, images, audio, video, and graphics are material combined in multimedia
and ALL are protected under copyright law.
Rules
of Thumb
- 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:
- Ten
percent or three minutes of motion media.
- Ten
percent or 1000 words of text materials.
- Five
images by an artist or photographer or 10 percent or15 images from a
collective work.
- Ten
percent or 2500 fields or cell entries from a copyrighted database or
data table.
- Ten
percent or 30 seconds of music and lyrics from one work or from several
extracts from one work.
- 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.
- 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.
- Student-
and faculty-produced multimedia works may be performed and displayed at
open houses, in-service workshops, and professional conferences.
- 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.
- 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.
Copyright Quiz on Multimedia
Additional
Resources
American DE Consortium: Fair Use
Guidelines For Educational Multimedia
CCUMC: Copyright Initiatives
CONFU: The Conference on Fair Use
