Copyright Issues in Teaching with Technology

Public Domain
Public domain works may be freely used in teaching, research, and any other form of scholarship. Works can enter the public domain several ways. This is not an all-inclusive list.

Expiration of copyright. Works become public domain when their terms of copyright protection expire. See Laura Gasaway’s web site.

Federal Government authorship. With the exception of some reference data published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, materials published by the U.S. Federal Government are specifically excluded from copyright protection and are in the public domain from the date of creation. However, works produced by an independent contractor with Federal funding do qualify for copyright protection. Hence, a videotape about AIDS research produced by a private contractor under a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services is copyrighted and receives the same protection as any other audiovisual work. Note also that restrictions on the Federal Government do not apply to states. The works of a state government may be copyrighted, with decisions on whether a work should be copyrighted or entered into the public domain left to the individual states (Carroll, 2002).

Abandonment of copyright. Although this rarely happens, an owner may relinquish the copyright to a work and dedicate it to the public domain. The abandonment of copyright requires an explicit and overt statement from the copyright holder (Carroll, 2002). This question has arisen numerous times regarding materials posted on the Internet, such as listserv or Usenet newsgroup messages or web pages. Unique issues related to the Internet will be discussed below.

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