Copyright at the Seminary

Key elements of the Educational Multimedia Fair Use Guidelines are summarized here. The Guidelines specify how much of copyright-protected sources may be included in multimedia products prepared by students or faculty members for course-related work. Use of larger portions requires permission from copyright owners. Creators of multimedia products may prepare a total of three copies, one of which is for preservation and replacement purposes only. One of the copies may be placed on Library Reserve. An exception is allowed for joint projects: each principal creator may retain a copy. Fair Use status expires two years after the first instructional use of a particular multimedia product.

• Motion Media. Up to 10% or 3 minutes of a source, whichever is less.
• Text. Up to 10% or 1000 words of a source, whichever is less. An entire poem of less than 250 words, but no more than 3 poems or excerpts by one poet. No more than 5 poems or excerpts from one anthology.
• Music, Lyrics, Music Video. Up to 10% but not more than 30 seconds total from an individual work.
• Illustrations, Photographs. No more than 5 images by one artist or photographer. No more than 10% or 15 images, whichever is less, from any single published work.
• Numerical Data Sets. Up to 10% or 2500 fields or cell entries, whichever is less.
• Internet Sources. Though it can be difficult to determine what is copyright protected and what is in the public domain, the multimedia creator is responsible for adhering to copyright law.

Credit the sources and display the copyright notice and copyright ownership information if shown in the original source. Crediting the source must adequately identify the source of the work, giving a full bibliographic description where available (including author, title, publisher, and place and date of publication). The copyright notice includes the word "Copyright" or the copyright symbol, the name of the copyright holder, and the year of first publication. An example of an opening screen notice may be found below:

Copying media items without the copyright owner’s permission is illegal. An exception is made for libraries to replace a work that is lost or damaged if another copy cannot be obtained at a fair price [Section 108 of the Copyright Act of 1976.) It is also illegal to change the format of a media item without the copyright owner’s permission. Copying small excerpts of audio or visual material may be permitted for teaching purposes. Please see the copyright policy for amounts that have been deemed to fall under fair use when copying audiovisual excerpts.

When the Seminary makes an audio or visual recording of speakers on campus, those speakers provide us with releases which indicate whether their material can be copied. The catalog record for each recording will indicate whether copies can be made. A single copy of a music recording can be made for the purposes of constructing aural exercises or examinations. Otherwise, the restrictions on copying non-music recordings apply.