What is copyright? The Oxford English Dictionary defines copyright as "The exclusive right given by law for a certain term of years to an author, composer, designer, etc. (or his assignee), to print, publish, and sell copies of his original work." So what does this mean for you? You would like to be able to have your favorite song play in the score of the fantastic movie you just made, you'd like to use a section of a manuscript in your class, you'd like to use clips from a DVD in your presentation, etc. The good news is you can do some of these things provided you follow some guidelines. The United States does allow for this with something referred to as Fair Use.

The Copyright Act in section 107 sets out a criteria for "fair use" which allows one to reproduce a work without obtaining permission of the copyright holder or paying for such use. Examples of such use include criticism, scholarship, and teaching. However, this does not mean that one can copy an entire work just because it is for a classroom exercise. Rather there are four criteria one should use to determine if the use of a work is fair. The criteria are:

• the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
• the nature of the copyrighted work;
• amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.¹

So according to these guidelines it would not be legal to copy an entire book for a class or even two or three chapters. It would not be legal to use an entire song on the soundtrack of a class project, but it would be OK on a home movie never given to anyone. It would not be OK to use the clip from Sixth Sense where the twist is revealed. As you can see, determining if a use is "fair" can be highly subjective. There are some loose rules that you can follow:

• on average you can use 10% of a musical work;
• on average you can use 3 minutes of a theatrical film ;
• under no circumstance can you convert between formats (i.e., no VHS to DVD, cassette to MP3, paper to PDF);
• you can use up to a chapter from a book; and
• you can use up to a stanza from a poem.

Anything beyond this would require the permission of the copyright holder and a payment for the right to use the material.

This makes things seem kind of bleak doesn't it? Well, don't despair for Creative Commons is there. Creative Commons licenses allow authors, musicians, and educators to choose to have "some rights reserved" rather than "all rights reserved". This would allow an author to prohibit commercial use of their work but allow all other uses as long as they are acknowledged as the original creator of the content. As a result we have been able to compile a list of music sources which have music that can be used in student and faculty projects. In the future we hope to have videos as well.

• Pod Safe Audio
• GoingWare (not explicitly CC)
• Common Content
• Magnatune
• Comfort Stand (not explicitly CC)
• CCMixter
• Public Domain 4 U (not explicitly CC)
• Oddio Overplay (not explicitly CC)
• jamendo
• Freesounds
• Freeplay Music
• Garageband.com