This guide intends to refer NWC community users to accurate information. However, information received from the NWC Library or the NWC Copyright Librarian is neither legal advice/opinion nor legal counsel to the college or any members of the NWC community. Please contact the NWC Office of General Counsel or NWC Staff Judge Advocate's Office for NWC-related legal advice and interpretation of the law, or personal counsel for personal legal advice. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by NWC of sites or the information, products, or services contained therein, nor does NWC exercise editorial control over the information found at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this guide. U.S. copyright law is subject to change.
NWC faculty and staff are individually responsible for following all copyright instructions and legal code in the scope of their work at the college. Please familiarize yourself with these copyright instructions and legal code:
The NWC Copyright Office found within the NWC Library is happy to assist you with copyright informational coaching and education during your time here at the college. Please be aware that the Copyright Librarian cannot provide legal guidance. Email contact: copyright@usnwc.edu
Face-to-Face Teaching
U.S. copyright law permits teachers and students to make certain uses of copyrighted works in face-to-face teaching. This is codified in 17 U.S.C. § 110(1). The copyrighted work must be lawfully obtained. Plagiarism is not a part of copyright law, but full attribution/citation is a widely-accepted academic best practice.
17 U.S.C. § 110(1) provides that the following is not a violation of copyright:
"performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction, unless, in the case of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, the performance, or display of individual images, is given by means of a copy that was not lawfully made under this title, and that the person responsible for the performance knew or had reason to believe was not lawfully made..."
Essentially, what this means is that classroom teachers can use copyrighted materials in the physical classroom if they are at a nonprofit educational institution and are performing or displaying the item (for example, showing it on a smartboard). This exemption does not apply if you are making copies of the item or distributing it. If your use meets these conditions, you may perform or display the work without violating copyright, as long as you are using a lawful copy. Permission from the rightsholder is not necessary. A classroom teacher can show a lawfully obtained movie or image or project on a screen a page from a book for teaching purposes in a live, face-to-face classroom with the course's enrolled students only.
No specific type of work is excluded from this exemption (though anything you perform or display must be from a lawfully made/obtained copy). The House Report accompanying this section of the law provides that instructors and their students are in the duration of a face-to-face class time "free to perform or display anything in class as long as the other conditions of the clause are met. They could read aloud from copyrighted text material, act out a drama, play or sing a musical work, perform a motion picture or filmstrip, or display text or pictorial material to the class by means of a projector."
This does not cover online or hybrid teaching. There is another provision of the Copyright Act that can apply to online teaching (although there are many additional and strict requirements for faculty, for the institution, and technologically to meet for it to apply); please see §110(2) below for more details. Classroom instructors who do not meet this online teaching criteria in the 17 U.S.C. § 110(2) exception (such as online educators) or professors who wish to make a copy of a chapter of a book to distribute to the class should still consider the fair use statutory exemption. Fair use may permit the use and that determination should be made on a case-by-case basis each and every time a work is desired to be used.
Does the § 110(1) teaching exception apply to online courses (for example, one held over Zoom or in Microsoft Teams)?
Unfortunately, no. The exception in § 110(1) of the Copyright Act specifically applies to "face-to-face" teaching not online teaching. Online classes (on Zoom or in Microsoft Teams) are not considered an extension of face-to-face physical classroom settings. In the case of online teaching, in general, one can make a fair use assessment (§ 107) or follow the requirements found in § 110(2).
Does the "face-to-face" teaching exception apply to making copies of documents for class?
No. It allows you to display images or audiovisual materials in class only for the duration of the class. It does not allow you to make copies of copyrighted materials. In the case of making copies for class, make a fair use assessment (§ 107).
Distance/Online or Hybrid Teaching
U.S. copyright law has a provision, which is sometimes referred to as the TEACH Act, codified in 17 U.S.C. § 110(2). This provision gives instructors the right to use works for distance learning without permission under certain specific circumstances. All of the following circumstances must be met in order to rely on the TEACH Act exemption for online teaching.
If you:
and your use is:
and your institution:
then U.S. copyright law permits your use.
Why does the TEACH Act have so many requirements?
The Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2001 (the TEACH Act) amended § 110 of the U.S. Copyright law in order to facilitate the growth of digital distance learning. The goal of the TEACH Act is to permit the use of materials in an online setting similar to the way materials are permitted to be used in a face-to-face classroom setting. The many restrictions that are in place with the TEACH Act are designed to mimic a traditional classroom setting where students can see or hear the works, such as a film being shown or an image being projected, while allowing students and instructors to benefit from advanced digital technologies but still safeguarding the rights of copyright owners.
In a traditional face-to-face classroom setting, students are able to access and experience material works during a class period, but their access to these materials ends when they walk out of the classroom. Duplicating this experience in a digital environment can make things trickier because technology makes it much easier to provide access to copyrighted works to larger groups of people (beyond just students enrolled in a class) and it makes it easier to facilitate the ongoing copying and sharing of those copyrighted works. With a click of a few buttons, a work may be shared openly online. This dissemination possibility is riskier for rightsholders and is the driving force behind the many requirements provided in the TEACH Act.
Copyrighted materials displayed in an online class should not be available in electronic format online on the market. In that case, one should provide the link to those materials in Blackboard or Leganto to the course enrolled students. If one can adhere to the requirements found in the TEACH Act, best practices with online classes includes making sure the meeting is password protected, only students registered for the class have access to the meeting platform, and the class should not be recorded nor disseminated when copyrighted materials are displayed.
What if I can't meet all the requirements of the TEACH Act?
You may consider fair use for your use of a work. If you are unable to make a strong argument that your use is a fair use, you must obtain permission from the rightsholder to use the work or purchase a license to an electronic version with unlimited users (if available).
TEACH Act § 110(2) Resources:
Copyright is an important consideration in the selection of course materials and making them available to your students. It is important to understand the copyright issues in both reproducing and distributing copyrighted material in the course of teaching, learning and scholarship.
U.S. copyright law governs both the reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material. The making of either a print or electronic copy, and the distribution of the copy by any means, constitute a reproduction and distribution that is governed by copyright law.
All items used for NWC courses (including on Blackboard and Leganto) must comply with U.S. copyright law, Naval Instructions, NWC vendor contracts, NWC Copyright Policy, and NWC Reserve Policy.
When providing copyrighted materials to students whether in print or digital format, educators must either secure permission for use or ensure that they are meeting in good faith the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law. The copyright principles that apply to print materials in the course of teaching, learning and scholarship also apply to electronic materials. Permission may be required for the use of copyrighted materials even when they have already been posted elsewhere online.
Some Copyright Recommendations for Blackboard or Leganto Coursework
The decision to post a work on a course site involves legal questions about copyright. The guidelines below are meant to assist faculty in making their decisions.
Post a work on a course site if:
Further Considerations:
*Please see the NWC E-Reserve Guide for more details on Leganto.
Adapted from Davidson College Library Research Guides are licensed under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 International License.
Example Copyright Disclaimer for Course Sites and/or Syllabi
If you include copyrighted material on a course site, it is recommended as a copyright best practice along with other measures, to include a notice, such as the following:
This course site contains copyrighted materials. Those materials may include text, images, graphics, audio and video clips, and other content. In some cases, the copyright is owned by third parties and your instructor is making it available to you by permission or under the fair use doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 107). The content is made available only for your personal, noncommercial, educational and scholarly use. You may not use the content for any other purpose or distribute or make the content available to others, unless you obtain any required permission from the copyright holder. Some content may be provided via streaming or other means that restrict copying; you may not circumvent those restrictions. You may not alter or remove any copyright or other proprietary notices included in the content.
With your own lectures and notes, let your students know what you want them to share and how. You can include a notice in your syllabus to help guide students, such as the following:
My lectures and course materials (including slide presentations, tests, outlines, and similar materials) may be protected by copyright. You may take notes and make copies of course materials for your own personal and educational use. You may not disseminate this material further to others. For civilian students, if I am interested in posting your answers or papers on the course site, I will ask for your permission.
Leganto Notices & Attributions
Leganto automatically displays a notice to any user opening a citation to caution against further distribution. This is consistent with the notice described in 17 U.S.C. 108(f)(1). Authorized users must agree to the following statement by clicking the "continue" button to access and open the full citation resource:
Materials included in Leganto and Blackboard should include appropriate citations or attributions to their sources. If a desired use is determined by the user to fall within the four factors of the doctrine of fair use, any section copied from a book or journal should be accompanied by a photocopy of the title page and the copyright statement (© symbol) page from the original source AND a complete citation.
These citations may include:
Linking to Electronic Resources Licensed by the Library
When you wish to assign a reading of an electronic resource that is available in the library's electronic collection (e.g., journal article or eBook), the best practice is to link the student directly to the article using the persistent link.
If the student wishes to access the article off-campus, the student will be prompted to authenticate themselves through the NWC Library's proxy server. They would then use their Blackboard account or CAC to authenticate. This does not violate copyright law and in general does not breach any of our contracts with vendors (please see note below for an exception).
Linking is a better practice than downloading a PDF of an article and uploading it to a course site. Posting a PDF to a course site makes it much easier for students to violate copyright by posting the article somewhere public or forwarding it via email to non-NWC authenticated users. This would breach NWC Library's contract terms with its electronic vendors.
To sum it up, when a journal article or eBook is available through and licensed by the library, the best practice is to link to the article using the resource's persistent link by posting that link on your course page.
Notes:
Linking to Non-library Licensed Material
When possible, link to a legitimate and legal online copy of a work instead of posting or uploading it to Blackboard or Leganto.
Linking helps to mitigate the risk of infringement when using legitimate and legal resources. Use your best judgment to determine authenticity and that the hosting site is a legal one.
Using Media Content for Teaching Purposes
Instructors may wish to use digital images and media for display during class for illustrative purposes. In a live, face-to-face class of enrolled students, the face-to-face teaching exception to copyright law permits this practice. The TEACH Act exemption for online teaching may allow showing limited (reasonable) portions of digital media, but strict criteria limit this exemption. Please see 17 U.S.C. §110 for more information. Fair use (17 U.S.C. § 107) is another option to weigh for your use. Digital technological locks generally may not be broken to use digital media in class (for clarification, please see the DMCA tab on the Copyright Related Topics page).
The following are some common FAQs and responses:
Where should the media I wish to display in class come from?
If you wish to take full advantage of the face-to-face teaching exception, the media must come from a legal source. It is important to remember, too, that the face-to-face teaching exception does not permit making copies or reproductions of materials, so that analysis would have to be based on fair use (that would include using only limited reasonable portions and not a full film).
Can I show an entire movie in my class, even if that movie is currently protected by copyright?
Yes, if you are meeting with enrolled students in a face-to-face teaching lesson, you may show a movie for the duration of the face-to-face class for an educational purpose so long as you lawfully obtained that copy of the movie (perhaps you checked it out from the library or you purchased your own copy of the movie to show to the class). You cannot show a movie from an illegal source such as a website that is illegally streaming movies. This type of in-classroom use is most likely prohibited by the terms of use of any personal streaming platforms (e.g., Netflix); please read your personal use license carefully to determine what is allowed and what is prohibited to remain contract compliant.
If you are teaching an online course, then you would have to perform a fair use analysis on a case-by-case basis for each movie clip you wish to show. Note that you are unlikely able to show an entire movie (as one of the factors for fair use is the quantity used), unless the movie is in the public domain or has a public license that allows that specific use.
If you would like to assign a streaming film to students in your course, please submit a Purchase Request in Primo. Purchase requests may be submitted through the Library's Primo site (you will need to login to Primo with your NWC credentials in order to submit the request).
For more information on teaching with video, please read "The Copyright Implications of Teaching with Video" (Sara Benson interview from Copyrightlaws.com, 2019).
What about images, for instance, of a famous artist's painting?
In the case of displaying the image in face-to-face teaching, it is completely appropriate so long as the photograph image comes from a lawful source. With an online course, though, a fair use analysis would be appropriate. And, of course, if the image is in the public domain, then any kind of use is permissible.
What if I wish to convert an old copy of a VHS video into a DVD to show to my class?
Remember, the teaching exception to copyright applies only to face-to-face teaching and only to the "display" of the work, not to make reproductions/copying of the work. So, if the movie is still protected by copyright, it is best not to copy or convert the work. There are a few options for you to consider:
In a face-to-face class, it is preferable to live stream from links to legal audiovisual content live during class (or by inserting the original DVD or Blu-Ray into the computer to play) rather than downloading and/or copying content. Remember, the face-to-face teaching exception allows for the display and not the copying of the material. However, if after thoughtful research and analysis, you must make a small clip copy, you should engage in a fair use analysis (and not circumvent technological locks on media).
For films, change of format without permission is against the law. Short clips are an exception under certain parameters.
Can I show short clips in an online class?
Generally, if the class is online, you would need to engage in a fair use analysis. Using brief shorter clips is preferred under fair use, as one of the factors is the quantity used. The media also needs to come from a lawful source. There is an exception to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for educators to bypass digital safety measures to show short clips but not full films (only "reasonable portions"), but this should be the last option if the use is determined on a case-by-case basis to be a fair one. Remember that the materials, if placed online, should be placed on a password-protected course site and not on the open web. Students should be informed not to disseminate further and that the works are provided for personal educational use only.
If you would like to assign a streaming film to students in your course, please submit a Purchase Request in Primo and note that it is for a course along with you "need by" date. Purchase requests may be submitted through the Library's Primo site (you will need to login to Primo with your NWC credentials in order to submit the request).
Please see 17 U.S.C. § 1201 for details on the DMCA and New DMCA Exemptions (2021, U.S. Copyright Office) for the most up to date exemptions. The DMCA Exemptions 2024 website has been set up here.
Where can I find more resources on using media in teaching?
Please see the following resources for more information (not legal advice):
For more details on using media, including Public Performance Rights (film festival type-use), please see the film page.
Teaching with Your Own Published Scholarship
Many academics wish to assign their own previously published works to students for class reading. This is generally fine if the library licenses the particular journal that the civilian instructor wishes to assign. In that case, the best practice would be to link to the material directly from the library resource (see the Linking to Material tab of this box for more details).
What if the library does not license that particular journal? The civilian instructor then must consider their own individual copyright agreement with that particular journal/publisher. Does the copyright agreement permit for classroom distribution of the work? Note: the contract with the publisher supersedes general copyright law defenses, but fair use can always be weighed.
In order to proactively protect work in the future, civilian instructors should think about potential uses they may wish to make of their own work. This might include public presentations at conferences, placing a copy of the journal article in an institutional repository, or classroom teaching purposes (including posting on Blackboard or in Leganto). Once a civilian instructor identifies what they would like to use their work for in the future, they should include an exception or reserve the right to use the work for that purpose in their copyright agreement with the journal/publisher.
One potential source of information for future copyright negotiations is the SPARC Author's Addendum, which is a ready-made addendum to any publishing agreement reserving academic uses to the author.
Please see the Copyright for Authors (Scholarly Communication) on this guide for more details.
In the Process of Signing? Have You Already Signed a Transfer Agreement?
SHERPA RoMEO provides information about the copyright policies, open access, and self-archiving policies of publishers. This is an excellent source of information about specific publisher's copyright policies, and can be useful if authors needs to know, before or after signing copyright agreements, what rights they will/have retained.
Assigning links to online material available through the library is the easiest and safest way to be copyright and contract compliant.
Please contact libref@usnwc.edu for assistance finding library resources that fit your learning objective(s).
Please see the NWC Library-Licensed Materials page for more details.
Empower your students
Help your students make informed decisions regarding the work they and others create and use within Blackboard and Leganto. The following modules developed by University of Michigan's Library Copyright Office are helpful copyright introductions:
These modules cover:
Another Resource is Teaching Copyright