The Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, which apply only to educators who produce multimedia, is not a legal document, but an interpretation of the Copyright Act of 1976 by the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU), a group of educational users and copyright owners.
Although the guidelines have no legal binding, on Sept. 27, 1996, the U.S. House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property, issued a non-legislative report acknowledging the guidelines. In late April 1997, Bruce Lehman, Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, publicly stated that the Proposed Guidelines negotiated by CONFU participants had failed to achieve consensus support. However, proponents say the multimedia guidelines are finished and ready to use.
In most cases, copyright usage is a matter of interpretation—there are few definitive lines between fair use and unfair use. These guidelines represent an attempt to balance the concerns of publishers and educators. While they are a useful place to begin, using them might cause you to forgo potentially legal uses. At the same time, they are not guaranteed to be within all interpretations of "fair use."
"Incorporate portions of lawfully acquired copyrighted works when producing their own educational multimedia programs for their own teaching tools in support of curriculum-based instructional activities at educational institutions;
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Perform and display their own educational multimedia projects for curriculum-based instruction to students in the following situations:
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Face-to-face instruction
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Assigned to students for directed self-study
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Remote instruction [with limitations]
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Retain their projects indefinitely for the following purposes:
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To perform or display their own multimedia projects...in presentations to their peers, for example, at workshops and conferences
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As personal portfolios for later personal uses such as tenure review or job interviews
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Educators may use their educational multimedia projects created for educational purposes...for teaching courses, for a period of up to two years after the first instructional use with a class.
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Use beyond that time period, even for educational purposes, requires permission for each copyrighted portion incorporated in the production."
Motion Media "Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less, in the aggregate of a copyrighted motion media work..."
Text Material "Up to 10% or 1000 words, whichever is less, in the aggregate of a copyrighted work consisting of text..."
Text Material — Poems
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"An entire poem of less than 250 words may be used, but no more than three poems by one poet, or five poems by different poets from any anthology...
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For poems of greater length: 250 words may be used, but no more than three excerpts by a single poet, or five excerpts by different poets from a single anthology..."
Music, Lyrics, and Music Video
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"Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds...of music and lyrics from an individual musical work.
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Any alterations to a musical work shall not change the basic melody or the fundamental character of the work."
Illustrations and Photographs
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"A photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety.
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No more than 5 images by an artist or photographer...
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When using photographs and illustrations from a published, collective work, not more than 10% or 15 images, whichever is less..."
Numerical Data Sets "Up to 10% or 2,500 field or cell entries, whichever is less, from a copyrighted database or data table." A field entry is defined as a specific item of information in a record of a database file. A cell entry is the intersection where a row and a column meet on a spreadsheet.
Copying and Distribution Limitations Only a limited number of copies, including the original, may be made of an educator's educational multimedia project.
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Two use copies, only one of which may be placed on reserve.
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An additional copy may be made for preservation purposes to be used or copied only to replace a use copy that has been lost, stolen, or damaged.
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For jointly created educational multimedia projects, each principal creator may retain one copy (but only as permitted by use and time restraints previously outlined).
The credit and copyright notice information may be combined and shown in a separate section of the educational multimedia project (e.g., credit section) except for images. In such cases, the copyright notice and the name of the creator of the image must be incorporated into the image when, and to the extent, such information is reasonably available so that it appears on the screen when the image is viewed.
Notice of Use Restrictions The opening screen of an educational multimedia program and any accompanying print material must include a notice that states:
Certain materials are included under the fair use exemption of the U.S. Copyright Law and have been prepared according to the multimedia fair use guidelines and are restricted from further use.
Future Uses If there is a possibility that educational multimedia project could later result in broader dissemination, e.g., publication on the Internet, whether or not as a commercial product, it is strongly recommended that permissions be obtained during the development process for all copyrighted portions rather than waiting until after completion of the project.
