Contains two parts: 1) Reviewing copyright and fair use, and 2) Examples of remixing creative commons licensed resources

1. www.lumenlearning.com
Overview of Copyright and Fair Use
• Any work where broader rights are not explicitly
granted is copyrighted
• Fair Use allows limited exceptions to copyright. Fair
use is a bit vague, but generally the materials
• Should be restricted access (password protected)
• Should be used for a limited time (not be a regular,
integral part of the course)
• Should not be available for purchase

2. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts their own lecture notes on a
public wiki or blog.
This is OK: The instructor is the copyright holder. A
copyright holder can do anything they want with
their work.

3. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts a PDF of a journal article on a
public blog.
This is not OK: The instructor is providing public
access to a copyrighted work.
Citing some passages as part of a critique or review
would be fine

4. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts a PDF of a journal article in the
LMS for their student.
If done for one term, this likely would fall under Fair
Use.
If made a regular, integral part of the course, this
probably is not under Fair Use, and a coursepack
would be more appropriate.

5. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts a link to an article on the
Forbes.com website
Linking to a work provided online by the copyright
holder is always OK.
The downside is that if Forbes removes the article or
changes the URL, you lose access.

6. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts a PDF of a textbook section or
chapter in the LMS.
This is not OK: The copyrighted material is readily
available for purchase, and by posting it online,
you’re affecting the market for that product. This is
not allowed, even under Fair Use.
This is piracy.

7. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts in the LMS a link to a PDF of a
textbook section or chapter that was found in a
Google search.
This is still not OK: Just because someone else
facilitated the piracy does not make it legal. This is
the same reason that it’s illegal to download music
and movies that someone posted online.

8. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor posts a PDF of Creative Commons
licensed textbook.
This is OK: By adding a Creative Commons license,
the copyright holder has explicitly allowed you to
redistribute the work.

9. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor finds a great website that a teacher at
another school put up with their lecture notes. The
website says the materials are free for educational
use. He wants to put a copy of the materials in the
LMS.
This is gray zone, but probably not OK: Saying that
the materials are free for educational use does not
necessarily allow redistributing. Some folks would
not allow it, especially if their website includes
advertisements. It would be best to contact the
author (and suggest they use a CC license).

10. www.lumenlearning.com
When in Doubt
ASK!

11. www.lumenlearning.com
Creative Commons Permissions
By Example

12. www.lumenlearning.com
This is fine. You are revising and redistributing each
chapter, as allowed.
An instructor wants to include in their course:
1) a chapter from a CC Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-
SA) licensed book and
2) a few sections of a chapter from a CC Attribution-
ShareAlike-NonCommercial (BY-SA-NC) licensed
book.

13. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor wants to use a chapter from a CC
Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial (BY-SA-NC)
licensed book in their course, but wants to add into
it an image from Wikipedia that is CC Attribution-
ShareAlike (BY-SA) licensed and an image they
found on Flickr that is CC Attribution (BY) licensed.
This is remixing. Using the Flickr image is fine with
attribution, since the BY license allows remixing with
any other license.
Using the Wikipedia image is not ok, since both the
SA licenses require any remix to keep the same
license.

14. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor decides to make some edits to a
chapter from a CC Attribution (BY) licensed book.
She adds some additional original content, and
revises some of the language.
This is revising, and is fully allowed. Because of the
permissions of the BY license, she course make her
revised work available under almost any license:
fully restricted, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-SA-
NC, etc.

15. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor decides to make some edits to a
chapter from a CC Attribution-ShareAlike-
NonCommercial (BY-SA-NC) licensed book. She
adds some additional original content, and revises
some of the language.
This is revising, and is fully allowed. Because the
original work had a ShareAlike license, she would be
required to keep the same license on her revised
version.

16. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor decides to make a Creative Commons
licensed book more engaging by embedding
YouTube videos directly into the text materials.
This is revising of the book, and is fully allowed.
YouTube’s terms of use allow embedding of their
content into other pages.
The downside is that the video may disappear from
YouTube at some point. Unless the video is CC
licensed, we can’t make a backup copy and host it
ourselves in the LMS.

17. www.lumenlearning.com
An instructor finds a great website that a teacher at
another school put up with their lecture notes. The
website says the materials are free for educational
use. He wants to mix portions of those lecture
notes with his Creative Commons Attribution (BY)
licensed textbook.
That materials on that website are copyrighted, and
can not be remixed into a CC licensed work without
express permission.