Copyright Issues in Teaching with Technology

Ownership Rights and Exceptions
This paper is primarily concerned with the use of someone else’s copyrighted materials, not your own. According to Section 106 of Title 17, copyright owners are granted the exclusive rights to do, or to authorize others to do, any of the following:

• Reproduce the copyrighted work.
• Prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted original.
• Distribute copies of the copyrighted work.
• Perform the copyrighted work publicly.
• Display the copyrighted work publicly.

These exclusive rights have significant implications for college faculty members, because effective teaching is difficult in many disciplines without displaying or providing copies of or performing the intellectual property of others, most often in the contexts of classroom activities or out-of-class assignments for students. Fortunately, the authors of the 1976 revision recognized that under certain circumstances, the use of protected materials could be acceptable without permission from the copyright holder. In fact, the sections describing limitations on exclusive rights consume about 80 percent of Chapter 1 of Title 17. Two are of particular importance to college teachers. Section 107 addresses reproduction and distribution under the concept of “fair use.” Section 110 establishes a “face-to-face teaching exemption” that allows classroom displays and performances.

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