Copyright Pointers for Contributors

A key element of this project is to promote sharing and reuse of teaching material among educators. In order to lower the barriers raised by copyright and the associated confusion over whether "fair use" applies we strive to offer all the materials in our shared collection under a license that explicitly allows for this sort of reuse. This Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license allows for reuse of materials on the site as long as attribution is given to the original author, derivative works are offered up in a similarly free manner, and the material isn't used for a commercial purpose (e.g. included within a textbook that is offered for sale).

To make this happen each contributor must grant us permission to offer their contribution up under this sort of the license. In submitting your materials you are agreeing to this arrangement. It's important to note that we assume all materials you provide (either text or uploaded files and images) are either created by you or are offered up by their original creator in a fashion that is commensurate with this redistribution. If your contribution contains materials created by others (images, documents) you must have the permission of the original author (either explicitly given to you, or given implicitly by virtue of the material being in the public domain, or offered up under some similar license) in order to contribute them to this collection

What did all that mean? Questions and Answers

Does this mean I'm giving up my copyright/ownership of what I contribute?

No. Contributors to these collections retain their copyright of the things they contributed. They are free to do whatever they like with their materials (e.g. including it in a textbook for sale). The license contributors are agreeing to simply outlines the limits of what we can do with the materials (and by extension what people who find the materials through the collection can do, without have to go back to the author and ask for broader permissions).

Can I include the funny cartoon/useful figure I always use with my students? I copied it out of a book, but I'm an educator and that's fair use isn't it?

Probably not (unless you drew the cartoon/useful figure yourself). While it may be fair use to use some copyrighted materials in the context of your own classroom, it's much less clear once you start distributing the material beyond your own students. Please don't upload those sorts of materials to this site. Often you can find substitutes unencumbered by copyright or simply provide a link to the original material (or a description of how to get ahold of it) rather than including the material itself.

But I gave attribution to the original source. Doesn't that mean I can include it?

Unfortunately not. While notions of academic honesty and the importance of attribution for establishing the intellectual provenance of work are central to academic work they have no bearing when it comes to copyright (at least in the U.S.). If you don't have permission from the copyright holder citing them (regardless of how accurately and prominently you do it) won't magically give you permission.