Much of the information in this section is drawn from content posted on the Web site of the U.S. Copyright Office and is based on the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. The information appears here in an edited form.
For a fuller discussion of these topics, including references to legal and other resources, visit the website for the US Copyright Office: www.copyright.gov.
For most copyright questions, we follow an overall guide: When In Doubt, Gain Permission
Public Domain includes all works that are either no longer protected by copyright or never were.
Chances are high that the materials of greatest interest to students and faculty are not in the public domain. In addition, you must also consider other forms of legal protection such as trademark or patent protection before reusing third-party content.
Public domain materials generally fall into one of four categories:
For more information, view the page “When U.S. Works Pass Into the Public Domain“.
The Fair Use Doctrine contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair (or freely available), such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
It also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
For more information, view the page "Fair Use Doctrine (Section 107)" of the US Copyright law.
There's no one right answer as to what constitutes a "fair use" of a particular copyighted work. The answer varies from situation to situation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.