Increased Confidence
More Use
Stronger Defense
Better Teaching
Increased Confidence: Better understanding of copyright enables you to exercise your rights with confidence and assurance.
- It is difficult to intimidate or control someone who knows their rights under the law. As James Madison said, "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
More Use: By understanding copyright and fair use, you'll maximize your potential opportunities for use.
- The ability to lawfully access and use copyrighted works of all kinds is essential for educators and researchers.
- To keep teachers and researchers current, relevant, and moving forward, they must have access to and understand how to use enormous amounts of scholarly materials.
- Faculty members who understand their rights under copyright law are in a better position to assert them appropriately and recognize opportunities for enriching their own teaching and research.
Stronger Defense: Responsible, good faith exercise of your fair use rights is a powerful defense against infringement claims.
- Taking time to learn about fair use can have big pay-offs.
- ยง504 of the copyright act contains a critical defense for employees of a nonprofit educational institution who make a reasonable, good faith determination that their proposed use is a fair use. If this is done within the scope of their employment, a court, later finding that they had infringed, must remit statutory damages to zero.
Better Teaching: You can better teach students to exercise their rights if you have a firm understanding of copyright and fair use.
- Students learn by example
- Students learn more from you than just the subject matter in your class. They also learn how to interact with the intellectual property of others in an ethical manner that both respects the property and ideas of others but yet maximizes the development of new material.
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