To best position yourself to assert a fair use argument when using images, textual material, video, or other copyrighted work, consider the following:
Purdue University Global is a nonprofit educational institution of higher education, but this does not automatically grant the exemptions to using copyrighted works found in the TEACH Act. The TEACH Act requires additional action and care by the institution, community, and individuals to qualify for the exemptions. We currently recommend you instead consider fair use, licensing terms, seeking permission, and checking permissions for scholarly works with Copyright Clearance Center's RightFind Academic tool when you wish to use copyrighted works within the classroom. Should this change, we will update this guide and add more information about the TEACH Act.
Content on this site primarily adapted with permission from the Purdue University Office of Copyright.
Content on this "Examples" section adapted from the URI Fair Use and Copyright for Online Education, used under CC BY 4.0.
It is the responsibility of all members of the Purdue University Global community to make a good faith determination that their use of copyrighted materials complies with the United States Copyright Law and Purdue University Global's policies. The purpose of this site is to educate the Purdue University Global community on copyright. The information provided on this site should not be considered legal counsel or legal advice.
Examples in this section are intended to model the thought processes one should use when determining whether an intended use is a fair use (or permitted by other factors) given the particular facts at hand. Determinations of fair or permitted use are on a case-by-case basis.
1. Did the use transform the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a broadly beneficial purpose different from that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
2. Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
— Association of Research Libraries, Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries (2012)
Professor Gottlieb teaches a class in wildlife ecology and management. She has "flipped the classroom," requiring students to read her lecture notes in Brightspace ahead of time so that class meetings can be used for active learning exercises and discussion. To make her lecture notes more visually appealing, Professor Gottlieb has broken up the monotony of the text by inserting miscellaneous line art drawings of animals that she scanned from a field guide to wildlife published in 1996. Is this fair use?
Analysis
1. Did the use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a broadly beneficial purpose different from that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
No, Professor Gottlieb's use is unlikely to be transformative. The original purpose of the line art drawings is to assist in identifying wildlife, and Professor Gottlieb's use is for aesthetic purposes. While these purposes are different, Professor Gottlieb's use does not serve a broadly beneficial purpose or add value to the drawings; the images serve merely as "window dressing" for her course content.
2. Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
Given that the images are creative works and that the use is not transformative, the material taken is not appropriate in kind and amount.
Fair use: Probably not.
Possible alternative: From a pedagological standpoint, Professor Gottlieb could reconsider her use of images for a purely aesthetic purpose and instead use Wikimedia Commons, Flickr Creative Commons, or an advanced Google Image search to identify open-licensed visual content that would be directly relevant to the content of her notes. If she were determined to use images solely for aesthetic purposes, a search for open-licensed content would reveal that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has a collection of line art drawings of animals that are in the public domain and therefore free of copyright restrictions (as are all federal government publications).
At the end of a lecture on management styles, Professor Banerjee's PowerPoint slides included a Dilbert cartoon strip as the final slide. The strip depicts Dilbert wearing Mickey Mouse ears for Halloween and stating that he is dressed up as "someone's management style." Professor Banerjee intended the cartoon to be a bit of comic relief related to the topic. Is this fair use?
Analysis
1. Did the use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a broadly beneficial purpose different from that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
No, Professor Banerjee's use is not transformative. The original purpose of the comic strip was to amuse the reader, and Professor Banerjee is essentially using the strip for the same purpose—to amuse his students.
2. Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
Given that the comic strip is a creative work and that the use is not transformative, the material taken is not appropriate in kind and amount.
Fair use: No.
Note: If Professor Banerjee had displayed the Dilbert strip in the context of a lecture on the depiction of management in contemporary popular culture, explaining why he was using the strip and specifically what the strip illustrated, this would likely be a fair use.
Professor Lee is teaching an online photography course. His colleague Professor Jones had shown him an image in a news article from Getty Images of tourists in Red Square wearing face masks to protect themselves from the smog during the the 2010 Russian wildfires. Professor Lee felt that this photograph was a particularly good example of image composition and depth of field. He decided to use the photo in his PowerPoint presentation for the class's online seminar that week. In the text surrounding the image, Professor Lee clearly stated his purpose in displaying the image, explaining in detail how the image exemplifies the photographic concepts he is discussing. Is this fair use?
Analysis
1. Did the use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a broadly beneficial purpose different from that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
Yes, Professor Lee's use is transformative. The original purpose of the photo was to illustrate how bad the air quality was in Moscow during the wildfires. Professor Lee's purpose for using the photo is to illustrate concepts and techniques in photography.
2. Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
Because Professor Lee's use is transformative, and because it is necessary for him to use the entire image in order to illustrate the photographic techniques he is presenting, the material taken is appropriate in kind and amount, even though the image is a creative work.
Fair use: Yes.
Note: We recommend using the tools in a course management system like Brightspace to limit access to only the students enrolled in that course. Access restrictions are not a requirement of fair use, but they demonstrate a good faith intention to limit the use of the image to educational purposes. If you post your lecture notes or presentation slides online on your own personal website, you may be more likely to be challenged by the rightsholder than if you limited access to the just in a system like Brightspace.
Professor Gutierrez wants to share a video from Khan Academy on accounting balance sheets during a seminar hosted on YouSeeU. The professor shared her screen and audio while playing the video for the class.
Analysis
Did the use "transform" the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a broadly beneficial purpose different from that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
No, Professor Gutierrez's intended use is not transformative. She is using the video for the same purpose as it was intended: to educate students about accounting balance sheets. Indeed, she is using the film to convey the content of the course to the students instead of, for example, compiling her own examples and incorporating them into a presentation that she herself created.
Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
This video is a work of nonfiction, which favors fair use. However, the video is marketed as an educational tool, thus its use for in an educational context is not transformative.
Fair Use: No.
Alternative Solution: Link to the video in announcements to help students with the assignment. Merely linking to it from within LMS as a recommendation for further assistance on this topic perfectly fine - and even encouraged. However, Professor Gutierrez would be better off developing her own materials and presentation for her seminar using YouSeeU.
Professor Gutierrez is teaching an introduction to web design course and wants to embed a video into the course announcements about building a basic website, HTML, and CSS she found on YouTube to help students with the upcoming unit requiring them to code for the first time. She copied the embed code from YouTube’s sharing options.
Analysis
Instead of embedding the video into the course, Professor Gutierrez should link to the video instead. When a video is embedded, it could be considered duplication and distribution. Linking to the video avoids this concern as well as not requiring a fair use analysis of the use.
As always, be careful to make sure the YouTube video was uploaded by the copyright holder of the content or clearly permitted by the rightsholder to do so, and do not link to any uploads that could be infringing on a copyright holder's rights.
Note: If you are a course lead developing a course, the use above is still permitted. As a best practice, use videos uploaded under a Creative Commons license (you can filter for such results on YouTube’s search results page).
Professor Chen is developing an online course titled Frontiers in Biotechnology. The unit she is working on concerns the use of genetic information in the context of personalized medicine. Professor Chen would like students to read this article:
Gholson J. Lyon, "Personalized medicine: Bring clinical standards to human-genetics research." Nature 482 (16 February 2012): 300-301. doi:10.1038/482300a.
Professor Chen downloads the article PDF from a library database that has Nature (in this case, ProQuest Central) and posts it to Brightspace for students to read. Is this fair use?
Analysis
Professor Chen does not need to rely on fair use in this case, because she could instead create a hypertext link to the licensed content within the library database she found the article in. If she really wanted the PDF uploaded to the course, Nature is also covered by the Academic Copyright License with Copyright Clearance Center. Because the reading is assigned in the course, we recommend either using a database's persistent link tools or checking the CCC license if uploading a PDF copy in the course LMS.
Professor Meghani is teaching an online philosophy course. She is trying to save her students money by putting as much of the reading in Brightspace as possible. She wants students to read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, which was originally published in 1848. She has a copy on her bookshelf that was edited by John E. Toews and published in 1999 by St. Martin's. Since it is not very long, she decides to scan the book and upload it as a PDF file to Brightspace. She plans to scan only the text of the Manifesto, not the introductory material or "related documents" that are included in the book. Is this fair use?
Analysis
A fair use analysis is not necessary. The Communist Manifesto is in the public domain, and therefore Professor Meghani is free to use it without restriction. The 1999 compilation by Toews, however, is still under copyright, as is his introduction to the book. As long as Professor Meghani uses only the text of the Manifesto itself, she does not have to be concerned with potential copyright infringement.
Note: Professor Meghani is making too much work for herself by scanning the text. Instead, she could direct her students to Project Gutenberg, which contains public domain titles available for download in multiple formats. In this case, the Marxists Internet Archive would also be a good source.
