You’ve got a bunch of great visuals that will help your students understand the concepts in your course. How can you make sure you can use them, while respecting copyright?
It depends on the source of the image. We’ll cover one of the most common topics we receive questions about: reusing images found online. For example, if you wanted to use the Plains Zebra infographic available on the PBS Nature site, Infographic: All About the Plains Zebra in a slide deck in Zoology 100, and upload a copy of it to the LEARN space for the course. One way you could use this image would be under the Work available through the Internet exception in Copyright Act – this exception allows you to copy an entire work as long as you meet a set of five requirements:
- You are reasonably certain that the copy of the work is a legal copy.
- The work was published on the PBS website and is labelled with the PBS and Nature logos. A search of tineye.com reveals that the image exists in two places online, according to their index, and the PBS website is where it seems to have been published first. These two pieces of information help us have confidence that the images are legal copies.
- You do not bypass any technological protection measures (e.g., password protection, or digital rights management software [e.g., Adobe Digital Editions]).
- The PBS page is not password-protected, and the image does not have any form of digital rights management attached to it (you can right click and save the image without issue).
- There is no clearly visible notice prohibiting copying on the website. The notice must be more than simply the copyright symbol (©).
- The image is labelled with the copyright symbol (©) alone. There are no notices on the webpage prohibiting copying.
- You are providing access to only students registered in the course.
- Only the students in Zoology 100 will have access.
- You'll provide attribution to the creator where available.
- On the slide that includes the image you’ll include a caption that states: Source: Brazell & Fulton (2013).
This is just one example, and we know there are lots of ways you find material for your course. You can use the Copyright Decision Tool to help you figure out what applies to your situation or read through the Guide for slides (and other lecture material) for more information on how copyright comes into play with the visual material in your classroom. If you need help, reach out to copyright@uwaterloo.ca.
