Previously in our series about teachers and copyright, we looked at the fair use doctrine, a carve-out in the Copyright Act that allows for certain uses of copyright materials without the owners’ permission--notably, educational uses. However, there are definite lines to be drawn as far as how much of something a teacher can use in the classroom.
A common question that teachers have is: What can I photocopy? Luckily, fair use specifically allows for multiple classroom copies of work. However, the specifics can’t be found actually in the Act itself; you have to do a little digging.
The following guidelines come from House Report 94-1476, clarifying the minimum standards of educational fair use. You can find the exact, full guidelines here, but what follows is a summarized version.
Single Copies
For research or preparation for a class, a teacher can copy book chapters, magazine and newspaper articles, short stories and poems, diagrams, and pictures.
Multiple Copies
A teacher can make multiple copies (one per pupil in a course) of something for classroom use or discussion, as long as:
- Poems are less than 250 words and two pages, prose is less than 2,500 words or an excerpt, and only one diagram/picture is copied from a single work.
- The copying is at the inspiration of the individual teacher and it would be unreasonable to take the time to get permission to use the work.
- The copying is only for the one class
- There is no more than one poem/article/story or two excerpts copied from the same author or more than three from the same collective work during one class term.
- There are no more than nine instances of multiple copying for one class during its term.
The next article in this series on teachers and copyright will cover copyright issues in the use of sound and video recordings in the classroom.
