Copyright Information

Statement of Guiding Principles

The Library asserts its Fair Use rights (17 USC § 107*) as a non-profit educational institution while also respecting the intellectual property rights of copyright holders and abiding by all laws governing usage of copyrighted materials.  The Library also seeks to educate the Trinity University community on issues related to copyright within higher education and digital communication, and will encourage the exercise of Fair Use and Open Access among all members of our institutional community.
 

Statement of Policy

OUR POLICY:

Trinity University Library abides by U.S. copyright law and respects the rights of intellectual property holders while being guided by the Association of Research Libraries’ Code of Best Practices in Fair Use.

I. Practical specifics for library- or ITS-facilitated digital access to copyrighted media content:
 

Instructors may request through Student Accessibility Services that audio or video content be digitized and made streamable through TLearn’s Echo module, or they may place reproductions of copyrighted works on physical reserve, provided that such reproduction and transmission:

a.  is, in the professional judgment of the supervising instructor, directly relevant to the course’s subject matter and is vital to their pedagogical goals;

b.  is not excessive in amount or substantiality of content (see 3. under “Fair Use”, below);

c.  is wholly password-protected at all times and restricted only to currently enrolled members of the relevant class; if streamed or placed on an electronic course page or learning environment;

d. is removed from all visibility and access upon the cessation of the course; or

e.  is of work(s) in the public domain or licensed under specific terms that mitigate a., b., c., or d., above (eg, Creative Commons), or which are the faculty member’s or institution’s own intellectual property.

Library and or ITS staff will serve as arbiters of the above criteria (except a.) and will keep longitudinal records of all reproductions made and content posted.
 

* Fair Use (17 USC § 107)

A "four factors" test is used to determine if a proposed use is fair or not.  These factors are:

1. Purpose of the usage -- Academic uses (education, criticism, commentary, etc.) are easier to defend as 'fair' than commercial uses.  The new ARL Code of Best Practices suggests that educational usage can be considered “transformative” and thus fair.

2. Nature of the copyrighted work -- Non-commercial or non-fiction/fact-based works (information) are more understandably used fairly than creative fiction (entertainment).

3. Amount and substantiality of the portion of the work used -- A transformative, academic work could conceivably use large portions of an existing copyrighted work for critical or analytical purposes, provided such copying is not excessive and does not effectively “gut” the work of its most significant, substantial content, however small a portion that may be.

4. Impact on the market value of the work -- Copying should never significantly reduce the rightsholder’s revenue on the work, nor should it ever effectively compete on the market for the work.

An important note about factor #1: The use of the material for academic purposes is not by itself a sufficient justification of Fair Use. The four factors interact with each other and must be considered together; no single one of them "trumps" the other three.


II. Practical specifics for placement of other (non-media) copyrighted material on a course management system (TLearn) by instructors:
 

The Library does not offer an electronic reserve service for the posting of digitized materials whose original publication format was in print. Further, due to library staff limitations and the large volume of digitally reproduced print content that Trinity faculty use in TLearn course pages, the library is unable to review and approve every such case for compliance with the requirements listed above. Faculty must therefore assume responsibility for adhering to those guidelines. The Library is always available to assist any member of the Trinity community seeking guidance about copyright issues.

For assistance with reserves, please contact Eliza Perez at (210) 999-8183 or by e-mail at eperez1@trinity.edu.

Elizabeth Huth Coates Library
Trinity University
One Trinity Place
San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
Phone (210) 999-8126
Fax (210) 999-8182
http://lib.trinity.edu

Reserve Guidelines & Procedures

Association of Research Libraries Know your CopyRights

Federal Copyright Law -- A complete online transcript of U.S.C. Title 17 and related laws

Frequently Asked Questions about Copyright -- A FAQ provided by the U.S. Copyright Office

Top Ten Urban Legends About Copyright

Copyright Clearance Center -- Copyright resources and online permissions purchases

10 Big Myths about Copyright Explained

When Copying is OK: The “Fair Use” Rule

Creative Commons

7 Things You Should Know About Creative Commons

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States -- table from Cornell U. showing when materials are protected by copyright and when they enter the public domain

Legal Sources of Online Content


Guiding Principles and Policy Statement

Most creators will at some point want to incorporate others’ images into their own work. Traditional US copyright law (17 U.S.C.) and all its attendant provisions can be difficult to navigate and understand, and even the law’s robust “Fair Use” provisions can leave a lot of uncomfortable ambiguity. In fact, you can’t ultimately KNOW if your usage of a copyrighted work is fair or not until after you’re sued for infringement and a verdict is reached! This process can take years and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are abundant real-life examples of this dilemma.

So here is a brief outline of the approaches you can take, along with their advantages and disadvantages, when you want to incorporate either whole or partial elements of others’ copyrighted visual images into your own works. Note that in ALL cases, properly attributing the original creator or rightsholder is absolutely necessary.


OPTION 1: Use whatever image(s) you want and just claim fair use.

OPTION 2: Pay royalties to use professional stock images.

OPTION 3: Use stock photos provided by free image sources.

OPTION 4: Use public domain or Creative Commons-licensed works.

OPTION 5: Embed the images into your work using HTML code (ie, a link).

Two final considerations:

1. Whatever option you choose, think carefully about your intended purpose when using photographs of real human beings. This document has pertained to copyright issues, but a further legal and ethical question arises when using photos of living persons, regardless of the source of those photos, in a commercial context or when associated with a concept that the human subject might object to. While it’s true that in most jurisdictions a person photographed in a public space is not considered to have any right to privacy (and thus for example, individuals photographed in a city park have no legal control over a straightforward reproduction of their likeness), they might not want to appear in an advertisement, a for-profit publication, or in promotional content for organizations or activities that they want no association with. Models who appear in commercially produced and licensed stock photos almost always sign a document called a model release which expresses their consent to commercial or otherwise unspecified applications, but it’s always a good idea to verify this with the stock photo company.

2. Be aware of trademarks, and how the inclusion of these in an image can alter your ability to freely use that image. For example, just because a Flickr user’s photograph of a street in New York carries a Creative Commons license, if that image contains the Starbucks logo, you might not be permitted to incorporate that specific element of the picture into your own work. Generally speaking, a third-party trademark can appear in a creator’s visual work only in “editorial” contexts, which is to say that there must be some valid journalistic, academic, or critical reason for its appearance. For example, using that photo containing the Starbucks logo on a personal blog post about your New York vacation would likely not be allowed. However, its usage would be more justifiable in a news report discussing worker pay in Starbucks franchises .



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Author’s intellectual property per Trinity University Faculty Handbook, 2021- 2022: (4A) IV.B.2.
Viewpoints expressed are not necessarily those of Trinity University.