Ready-Made Content

Educators depend and count on readily available content to use as teaching resources within their lesson plan. Copyright issues need to be respected and ensure to make reference to any resource which is not theirs crediting the rightful author/s.

Erik Nelson discusses the impact of Technology and Education on Copyright law in a paper entitled "Copyright and Distance Education: The Impact of the Technology, Education, and Copyright
Harmonization Act", available from:

http://sunhong.wikispaces.com/file/view/10_23_teach_act.pdf

Here are some Key Definitions and Explanations of Intellectual Property, Copyright Law, and Fair Use from Section 101 of Title 17 of the US Copyright Law code.

• Literary works are works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, phonorecords, film, tapes, disks, or cards, in which they are embodied.
• Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works include two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of fine, graphic, and applied art, photographs, prints and art reproductions, maps, globes, charts, diagrams, models, and technical drawings, including architectural plans. Such works shall include works of artistic craftsmanship insofar as their form but not their mechanical or utilitarian aspects are concerned; the design of a useful article, as defined in this section, shall be considered a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work only if, and only to the extent that, such design incorporates pictorial, graphic, or sculptural features that can be identified separately from, and are capable of existing independently of, the utilitarian aspects of the article.
• Motion pictures are audiovisual works consisting of a series of related images which, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion, together with accompanying sounds, if any.
• Sound Recordings are works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as disks, tapes, or other phonorecords, in which they are embodied. [the last statement on nature of the material objects allows extension of this definition to digital music.]
• Phonorecords are material objects in which sounds, other than those accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. The term phonorecords includes the material object in which the sounds are first fixed.
• A work is created when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time; where a work is prepared over a period of time, the portion of it that has been fixed at any particular time constitutes the work as of that time, and where the work has been prepared in different versions, each version constitutes a separate work. [fixed includes in any tangible medium including a web environment and even an email message]
• A work is fixed in a tangible medium of expression when its embodiment in a copy or phonorecord, by or under the authority of the author, is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration. A work consisting of sounds, images, or both, that are being transmitted, is fixed for purposes of this title if a fixation of the work is being made simultaneously with its transmission. [Notice the mention of transitory duration. This stipulation is there to enable short term cache copying of web sites without copyright violations.]
• A pseudonymous work is a work on the copies or phonorecords of which the author is identified under a fictitious name. [The author under his/her real name would hold the copyright barring any contracts or stipulations to the contrary.]
• A collective work is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works are assembled into a collective whole.
• A compilation is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term compilation includes collective works.
• A derivative work is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a derivative work.
• A joint work is a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.

Worth distinguishing between: