Creative Commons Logo
I share Creative Commons Search with all my students and ask them to use if for finding multimedia. I do that because it’s the easiest. I also talk to them about fair use, but we seldom apply it for material that will be put online. In my previous post on Creative Commons and Copyright, I didn’t even mention fair use. I suspect that this is a common state in education, and that many educators, like me, are confused about copyright and fair use. This is particularly true for international educators who may have difficulty figuring out the laws of the local country.
The Difference Between Creative Commons and Fair Use
Creative commons allows creators to assign licenses to their own work. Creators can decide who can use their work and how. Fair use, on the other hand, allows creators to use copyrighted material, in accordance with particular considerations.
Just because an image or a song is available online doesn’t mean that viewers can use the multimedia in creations. Citing a copyrighted item does not give us the right to use it. The multimedia is meant to be viewed, not downloaded and/or used. You have to determine one of two things to be able to use multimedia that does not below to you: Creative Commons license or Fair Use.
4 considerations in determining fair use
- nature of the use
- purpose of the use
- amount of the use
- affect on potential markets
The most important consideration in considering fair use is transformativeness. The new creation should add value to or repurpose the copyrighted work that it uses. As a result of the added value and transformative nature of the work,
the cost to copyright holder < benefit to society.
- Note that the concept of fair use in this post, refers to the US concept. If you’re in Canada, please read the Fair Dealing Guidelines which summarizes Copyright Matters.
- Teachers and students at not-for-profit institutions in Japan can use copyrighted work for learning, with restrictions – http://www.cric.or.jp/cric_e/cs_1/case1.html
- Australia has the concept of fair dealing – http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2006A00158/Html/Text#param114
- Other discussions from an international perspective can be accessed from http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/best-practices
Resources (USA):
- http://mediaeducationlab.com/curriculum/materials
- http://www.slideshare.net/khokanson/yes-you-can-conquering-copyright-confusion-presentation
- http://mediaeducationlab.com/copyright
- http://centerforsocialmedia.org/medialiteracy
- http://copyrightconfusion.wikispaces.com/
- http://mediaeducationlab.com/sites/mediaeducationlab.com/files/CodeofBestPracticesinFairUse.pdf
- http://copyrightconfusion.wikispaces.com/file/view/Poster%20-%20Fair%20Use%20.pdf/287050408/Poster%20-%20Fair%20Use%20.pdf