Documents are no longer copyright protected, and therefore can be freely used, if:
- Published prior to 1923
- Published between 1923 and 1963 without a copyright notice
- Published between 1923 and 1963 with copyright notice on work and not renewed with the U.S. Copyright Office
- Note: The lack of online documentation with the U.S. Copyright Office does not mean the copyright was not renewed
Fair Use provisions and the Teach Act (2002) enables certain educational uses such as Canvas posting, providing:
- Limited portions of the work are made available at any one time, usually less then 10% of the total.
- Include proper attribution and citations for all material posted to Canvas,
- Use must be part of mediated instructional activities.
- Availability must take place during a period of time relevant to the context and duration of a typical class session.
- Access to course material must be limited to students currently enrolled for that particular course.
- Do not share course work posted to this site, or distribute via email to any unauthorized users.
- Once the course is completed, students should be denied access to the posted course material.
- Ensure the Blackboard site is password protected.
- No posting of protected materials developed specifically for online use.
- Use only lawfully acquired copies of materials (e.g., items obtained through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and items purchased by you or the institution).
- No posting of a website’s content on to Blackboard, instead only post a link to the website.
We recommend:
- Locate resources to use for coursework through full-text resources owned by the library system and link to them from Canvas
- Hyperlink to those resources from your digital syllabus
- Post links to websites instead of posting copies of a website on to Canvas
- Reconsider the need to digitize a print resource and find a licensed full-text alternative
- If you need to copy a resource:
All works not considered fair use require copyright permission. Obtaining copyright permission is the responsibility of the instructor posting on Blackboard. For official rules at UTA, please see the Handbook of Operating Procedures, Policy 5-401, "Copying Copyrighted Materials."
Further reading: Copyrights and Wrongs by Ann Springer, Counsel, American Association of University Professors, posted October 2006.
