Copyright Considerations for Faculty

When copying material to put on Reserve for students or when making documents available to students electronically, copyright laws must be followed. While Library staff cannot interpret copyright law, we can direct you to some helpful sources.

Community College of Allegheny County Regulation Manual Copyright Law
This is the College’s policy on Copyright. It was written in 1978 with very minor revisions in 1996. Go to Regulation 1.07 (not the policy with the same number). This is a Word document.
Copyright Law
This site was prepared by the General Counsel for the University of Texas. Very readable, with many examples of the law in action in areas such as distance learning, libraries, student use of material, faculty use of material, etc. Includes University of Texas copyright policies.
Copyright Clearance Center
CCC is a fee-based service that will assist you online gaining copyright clearance. They offer a tutorial on how to use their service. Using their Academic Permission Service, permission is granted automatically on hundreds of thousands of publications in their database.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (PDF)
This provides a summary of the DMCA. The Act does not cover distance education, but directs the Copyright Office to make recommendations to Congress regarding distance education. The recommendations have been made, but Congress has not as yet enacted legislation. The Report on Copyright and Digital Distance Education (PDF) is available as a pdf file. Refer to the Executive Summary, which provides an excellent overview of issues pertinent to distance education. The full report is about 350 pages long.

The DMCA has recently been updated by the Study Required by Section 104 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (8/29/01). Section 104 of the DMCA directs the Register of Copyrights and the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information to prepare a report for the Congress examining the effects of the amendments made by title 1 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the development of electronic commerce. Legislative action taken on the basis of this study could have far reaching effects on the ability of libraries to provide access to online material.
Copyright and Fair Use
This is Stanford University Library’s site for copyright information. The site provides links to the U.S. Copyright Office, copyright application form, copyright basics, current legislation, etc.
The TEACH Toolkit
The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act (TEACH) is designed to facilitate the use of copyrighted material in an educational setting. The North Carolina State University Libraries co-sponsor this site that explains the law, provides a permissions guide, the full text of the law, best practices, and other information.