Answers to the 20-Questions Fair Use Copyright Quiz


1. False. "Entertainment" and "reward" are explicitly excluded under copyright guidelines. To show a movie for entertainment purposes, you must obtain a version from an authorized distributor who can license you to show it.

2. True. The district must enforce its written policy, not just post it. Somebody needs to be monitoring the network (and, it must be said, the stand-alone computers, too). Unenforced policy cost one large district over $1 million.

3. False. Congress holds that videotapes of publicly broadcast shows can only be shown for 10 days afterwards unless the copyright holder grants greater allowances for educators. The time has long passed when she should have asked permission or purchased the tape.

4. True. The video is a legal copy being used for instructional purposes.

5. True. The length of the clip and its use for educational purposes support the fact that this is fair use. Since the school LAN is presumably not accessible to the outside world, posting the report should not cause a problem.

6. True. As long as the material is not publicly distributed, the student may archive his/her work.

7. False. Internet pages are copyrighted automatically. The student cannot safely post (and therefore re-copyright) anything for the general public without permission--even if credit is given. Use in a classroom report would have been okay.

8. True. The distributors of "Bill Nye," like those of many other educational shows, allow educational retention after original broadcast, in this case, for three years.

9. True. The competition was expressly designed for classroom work by students. If the resulting projects were distributed on CD-ROM or posted at a Web site, however, the copyrighted works could cause a problem.

10. True. Fair use is generally extended to include educator trainings and conferences.

11. False. Although netiquette would dictate asking permission, since it's serving an instructional purpose, the trainer should be all right. Because it is impossible to view a Web page without first downloading it into computer memory, merely caching the page for future use should not be interpreted as illegal copying.

12. True. The checkout is fine. The school must make serious efforts, however, to make sure parents erase the program from their computers.

13. False. The television station is wrong. First of all, it doesn't hold the copyright on "Seinfeld." Secondly, the use occurred within 10 school days after the broadcast.

14. False. For fair use, the copy must be legally obtained. The student was using an unauthorized copy. Francis Scott Key may be dead, but the orchestra that created the arrangement and created the tape is probably alive and kicking.

15. False. This is not instructional use. The fact that money is being charged is irrelevant; the problem lies in the use of copyrighted materials for non-instructional purposes.

16. True. "Players" such as this are intended for distribution and the program itself is never in simultaneous use.

17. True. The teacher does have the right to make them stop using his work.

18. False. The copyright holder sells the performance rights to schools in a very specific way. If you want "Cats," buy the performance rights. Sell tickets if you have to.

19. False. Schools may not tape in anticipation of requests. They can act only on actual requests.

20. False (at least for now). The copyright holder lost in a just such a case.
The U.C. schools are state schools and the court ruled the state could not be sued unless it consented. The ethical issue was unaddressed by the court.