Copyright Issues in Teaching with Technology

Music
Guidelines for Educational Uses of Music accompanied the 1976 copyright law revision and were directed primarily toward music faculty. The guidelines permitted:

• Emergency copying to replace purchased copies not available for an imminent performance.
• For academic purposes other than performance, single or multiple copies of excerpts of works that do not constitute performable units and do not exceed 10 percent of the whole.
• Recordings of student performances for evaluation or rehearsal purposes.
• Single copies of sound recordings owned by the institution or the faculty member for the purpose of constructing aural exercises or examinations.

Specifically excluded were copying for the purpose of performance and copying as a substitute for purchase, except as permitted above.

Section 110 permits both the playing of legally-acquired audio and video recordings of music in a classroom as well as the in-class performance of copyrighted musical compositions by the students and/or faculty member. The course topic is irrelevant. Such learning activities may be equally valuable in the languages, history, art and aesthetics, and myriad others besides music department courses. The House Report on the law clarified that this provision would include guest lecturers “if their instructional activities remain confined to classroom situations,” but not to singers or instrumentalists brought in from off campus for the purpose of presenting a program.

It is important to recognize that licensing requirements exist for public performances. The use of music in multimedia productions of both DWU staff and students should be informed by the Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia, which will be discussed below.

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