Copyright and Fair Use

The following post deals with avoiding copyright infringement (a legal problem), not plagiarism (an ethical problem).  You may need to cite additional things to meet the standards of academic integrity, in addition to any attribution you may need to do to substantiate fair use.  Also, note that libel and slander are other matters entirely, both of which are not only unethical, but also usually illegal.

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Fair use is a justification for using a portion of a copyrighted work for certain--but not all--educational, news reporting, parody, or cultural criticism purposes without express permission.  (You may also choose to obtain express permission to use larger portions of a work, or to avoid any risk of lawsuit.)  So quoting a small piece of, say, a news article would fall under fair use.  Fair use may also allow you to use a significantly altered work, such as when a DJ samples part of a familiar song to work into a mix.  

Note that the fair use principle does NOT allow you to simply take someone's image from Google Images and use it, even with attribution.  You would have to significantly alter the image, and even then there can be legal disputes.  (You may recall a series of famous Obama posters from the last election, where his face is artistically rendered in red, white, and blue tones.  Yet even this altered image has been the subject of a lawsuit.)

We watched a couple of videos about fair use, which are available here and  here.

More information on fair use and the Creative Commons Licenses can be found at www.copyright.psu.edu.  I urge you to read over some of the material in the fair use and Creative Commons sections to help you further understand the things that you will and won't be allowed to use once you leave academia.  Currently, most of your use of copyrighted material for class projects is covered under the TEACH Act of 2002.   

Even though you may be legally covered to use copyrighted material for class projects, you still need to cite the material to meet academic integrity standards.  You can find some information about citing digital files on Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) here. 

Finally, see more about the intricacies of fair use in the blogosphere here.  (While there is some gray area, realistically most images you see on other people's blogs violate copyright law.)