
Fair use
You may not need to worry about copyright at all! Many works are not protected, or are already licensed to you or your institution for the uses you wish to make.
1. Unprotected works
Copyright does not protect, and anyone may freely use:
- Works that lack originality
- logical, comprehensive compilations (like the phone book)
- unoriginal reprints of public domain works
- Works in the public domain
- US Government works
- Facts
- Ideas, processes, methods, and systems described in copyrighted works
The presence or absence of a copyright notice no longer carries the significance it once did because the law no longer requires a notice. Older works published without a notice may be in the public domain, but for works created after March 1, 1989, absence of a notice means virtually nothing. The ALA Public Domain Slider may help:
Lolly Gasaway and Peter Hirtle explain the rules for determining whether a protected work is in the public domain in two resources. These rules are complex, partly because they have changed many times. At their most basic, excluding anonymous works and works for hire, the rules can be sumarized as follows:
- Any work published on or before December 31, 1922 is now in the public domain.
- Works published between January 1, 1923 and December 31, 1978, inclusive, are protected for a term of 95 years from the date of publication, with the proper notice.
- But, if the work was published between 1923 and December 31, 1963, when there was a non-automatic renewal term, the copyright owner may not have renewed the work. If they didn't renew, the original term of protection (28 years) will have expired and these works will be in the public domain. Check the Stanford Determinator to determine renewal status for books published during these years.
- After 1978, the way we measure the term of protection changes. It no longer begins on the date of publication, rather, it runs for 70 years from the date the author dies. Publication is irrelevant. Works are protected whether they are published or not.
- Finally, those works that were created before December 31, 1978, but never published, are now protected for the life of the author plus 70 years.
2. Library-licensed works
Check your library's databases and catalogues. They may already have just what you need.
3. Creative Commons licensed works
Learn to do effective Creative Commons searches! You may find exactly what you need with the rights you need to use it, available online free.
4. Is the work available freely on the web without an express permissions statement, and therefore covered by an implied license?
All of us who place materials on the web do so knowing that people will use our works in certain ways (downloading, making personal copies, and so on). This is the essence of an implied license. I put my materials out there and even though I don't expressly give you the right to do these things, the law assumes that I must have intended to give you the right to do what a reasonable copyright owner would expect the public to do. Most nonprofit, educational uses would likely be within the scope of what people expect when they place materials on the web. The scope of this license might be the same as or different from fair use, but it's good to know that we have both. Providing attribution should become automatic for you, whenever you use others' works.