• Copyright and Fair Use Guidelines for Teachers
     
    The following chart was designed to inform classroom teachers of their rights under the copyright law and copyright guidelines of the United States. Copyright and the notion of intellectual property was written into the Constitution of the United States to promote learning and the useful arts---and was designed to be supportive of the work of educators.

    The purpose of copyright protection is repeatedly and mistakenly reported to be for the protection of authors and other intellectual property owners. In fact, copyright has been always been for the purpose of benefiting society as a whole and particularly the institutions of education. Learning, or "science" in the language of the Enlightenment and the Constitution, was to be promoted by allowing authors and others rights for a limited time for their work. The first copyright act written into federal law was titled "The Education Act."

    Teachers in the classroom make the decisions closest to the field of instruction and it is teachers that have the greatest rights---rights that even their districts do not have. This Copyright Chart was designed to inform teachers of what they may do under the law.
     
    Click here for the Copyright Guidelines chart.