How to Follow Copyright Law for Classrooms

One of the challenges for teachers is following federal copyright law for educational purposes. Students and teachers can use a variety of preprinted or recorded material as long as its purpose falls within copyright guidelines. Copyright laws are intended not only to protect authors and artists, but to provide material for educators to use during instruction. Follow these guidelines to learn more about copyright laws in the classroom.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Consult the Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, updated 2003 (see Resources below).

2. Make multiple copies of poetry if it is under 250 words or less for use in classroom instruction. Be sure the copies are made from legally purchased originals. Students may also use this guideline for incorporation of poetic text into multimedia projects. Students should use ALA guidelines for citation purposes.

3. Do not make anthologies from printed material.

4. Copy text from books at a rate of 10 percent of the entire work, or a thousand words. The work itself should not be less than 500 words.

5. Make copies in this manner only 9 times per class each term.

6. Request for copies must come from the individual teacher and not from the district.

7. Do not make copies from consumables like workbooks and be sure to follow all copyright guidelines in the inside front cover of any book.

Tips & Warnings

• These are general guidelines that answer questions regarding printed text only. There are many other forms of media used by teachers in the classroom that have unique procedures to follow.
• Purchase supplemental materials for instruction only if they may be copied. There are a large number of great reproducible materials available that save teachers the need to constantly check copyright guidelines.
• For the most part, a classroom teacher can copy most any type of printed material for a single use in the classroom. This is with the understanding that the material may not be an entire work other than poetry, used more than once, sold in any way, plagiarized or otherwise not fall under the "fair use" definition.

Resources

• Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers.
• Copyright Law of the United States of America, June 2003.

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