Requirement 1:
Use only licensed external materials that properly meet the purpose of the course content.
- Use Creative Commons licensed materials, materials in the public domain, or other licensed materials such as Pixabay that meet your needs.[1]
- Purchase stock photos with the license that meets your needs and practices described in this style guide.
- For purchasing, contact your CDM or project manager.
- Obtain permission from the copyright holder.
- Make sure to explain your use and the nature of our fee-based course enrollment (if applicable). Contact your CDM or project manager for help.
- Make sure to store the permission in a designated location of the course development folder in Drive.
- Refrain from using a licensed photo that contains other copyrighted materials or logos, celebrities, and other identifiable persons unless it clearly comes with a model release.
- Avoid resorting to educational fair use to use external materials in our course content other than the use described in Requirement 3.[2] If we do decide to justify use based on fair use, write a short justification and keep it with the course materials in Google Drive. If you must use copyrighted materials under fair use, consult your design manager or the assistant director of course design.
Note:
[1]: Always check the license of the public domain materials. Sometimes, the content of the material is in the public domain, but the material itself has the copyright. For example, see the Louvre’s terms for reuse of their photocopies of the public domain artworks.
[2]: Our use of external material may be for educational use, but oftentimes, the final product (the course) is open to the public only with fees and may not qualify as fair use. None of us is a legal expert, and it is safer practice not to resort to fair use when using copyrighted materials.
Requirement 2:
Strictly follow the terms and restrictions described in the license, terms of use, and user agreement.
- When using CC Licensed materials, consider the following:
- Avoid the Non-Commercial License unless you can confirm that we have obtained permission from the copyright holder and the permission states whether the course can be paid or must be free.
- Understand the restrictions of each CC license. (Refresh your understanding of CC Licenses.) Acceptable CC licenses:
- Public Domain – CC0
- Includes items deliberately placed within the public domain by the author, items that are not subject to copyright protections (e.g., public documents authored by government officials in their official capacity as public servants), and items whose copyright protections have expired.
In general terms, works published before 1927 (95 years before present, 2022) are in the public domain.
Guide: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/copyright/publicdomain
- Other Creative Commons Licenses that Permit Commercial and Non-commercial Use with Attribution
- CC-BY
- CC-BY-SA
- CC-BY-SA-ND
- *NOTE: This last form of CC licensing, “-ND”, is more restrictive and requires that the work be displayed verbatim, as is, without adaptation.
- Remix CC-licensed materials only if they satisfy each other’s terms. (See the CC License Compatibility Chart.)
- Read each website and tool’s terms of use carefully to understand what they allow you to do with their content and what you are required to do if you use their content:
- When using materials in OER and federal government works, follow their instructions or restrictions of use, if any. (Not all materials in those domains are in the public domain and free of restrictions.)
- When the website or tool has a policy or term that contradicts its CC licensing, avoid using the site or the material at all—for example, in a case like this:
- A website has the CC BY-SA license but has a use term prohibiting commercial use.
- A website has the CC BY-NC, but the licensor asks for a fee to use the material for commercial use.
- Before inserting a link to a website, check if it allows linking.
- Check the licensing terms and terms of use of each stock photo. This includes fee-based (i.e., Adobe) and free (i.e., Pixabay) stock photos.
- When you have any concerns or questions, contact your design or project manager before you use or publish the content for our users.
Requirement 3:
Utilize external materials in a manner that does not imply that the materials were authored by us or a party other than the copyright holder of the materials.
- Make appropriate attributions for the licensed external materials not owned by Michigan Virtual and/or clients unless the licensor instructs otherwise.
- Include attributions for public domain materials as a best practice or follow the use terms of the website that collects the materials (i.e., Photocopy of Léonard de Vinci’s Monna Lisa by Michel Urtado via https://www.louvre.fr/en).
- When the lesson must include external material (text and images) for the students/users to analyze as a part of their learning activity, link to the original authorized sources if available and possible.
- If the students must pay a fee to access the authorized source, it must be avoided unless the project permits it. Consult your project manager.
- If the lesson must contain the copyrighted work in an excerpt or in-line short quotation for the purpose described above, include the citation/attribution in APA format on the same lesson page.[1] This does not apply to AP resources found in the College Board website.[2] The amount of cited work in a lesson must be in moderation.[3] This means
- the lesson activity truly calls for the resource and no other alternative, or it is required by the content standard,
- the lesson activity is not solely built by the external material,
- the lesson does not use excessive numbers of the external material(s), even in small chunks. [3]
- When using stock photos for decorative purposes, use lower resolutions to prevent inadvertent redistribution of those photos. If applicable, disable download. If using Course Arc, always use the image block.
- If any part of the lesson content is supported by unique information from the external materials, always cite the source in APA format on the same lesson page by marking the part of the lesson clearly.
- This includes when the script writer consults external materials to write the lesson content.
- The lesson should not be solely supported by information from external materials.
- If any part of the lesson contains AI-generated content, please review the Style Guide: Artificial Intelligence on how to appropriately cite.
- If the external materials originate in countries other than the U.S., we will follow U.S. copyright regulations to handle those materials.
Note:
[1] For intending to use copyrighted music and films for students to analyze, consult your design manager or the assistant director of course design.
[2] AP resources including past exam materials and anything from their AP Classroom should not be used. We can only link to it if needed. Some of the suggested resources in the AP course description packet can be utilized upon obtaining their permission.
[3] Read more about the four factors of fair use on the University of Chicago website.
[3] Read about the excessive use case in the Factor 3 section of the Columbia University Library website. |
