Online & Distance Learning: Copyright & Fair Use

Sharing materials with  students online can be tricky in a legal sense unless you are using materials with any of the following properties:

• You are the copyright holder of the materials
• You are using materials from the public domain
• You are using materials with Creative Commons licensing and doing so legally
• You are using copyrighted items and have proactively requested and received permission to do so in the way you have chosen to do so

How do you know if something is copyrighted? That, too, can be tricky; most created items in print and on the Internet are indeed copyrighted. If you are unsure, please see our new Copyright Information guide or ask a librarian for assistance.

If you wish to share a copyrighted item online with your students, you will need to make sure you are legally doing so, according to the Technology, Education, and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act of 2002, the law pertaining to Fair Use, and/or the laws concerning Course Reserves and Interlibrary Loan.

Even linking to copyrighted works can be an issue if there is a licensing agreement with this institution that doesn't allow for linking, such as has been the case with the publisher of Harvard Business Review.

Please see our new Copyright Information guide or ask a librarian for assistance if you have any doubts.