Instructify

I ran across a great example of fair use in education that I wanted to share because it teaches us a lot about one type of situation where you can use copyrighted photos, and illuminates the thought process/procedures for working out whether something is fair use and how to document it.

The Wikipedia entry on Anne Frank features the famous picture of her that we all know well.

When you are using photos from Wikipedia, it’s always a good idea to go to the image page. You get there by clicking on the picture. It will let you know what licensing the picture has, and how to credit it. You should always look at this page before you copy a picture from Wikipedia. The one for Anne Frank’s photo is interesting. Let’s take a look:

1. Now we see that photo is copyrighted but unlicensed. This means it’s not “registered” but that makes no difference about whether it is “protected”.
2. They are using it under Fair Use because no free equivalent is available, it shows the subject, and it’s being used for educational purposes.
3. Someone is telling the uploader (the person who put it up and wrote that rationale), that they did not put up enough information, and lists what is missing.

This illustrates what steps Wikipedia wants contributors to go through to document fair use, and is a good lesson in what you might want to do if you are making a fair use of copyrighted material on your Website at school. -ALICE MERCER

Related Stuff:

Copyright in education, part 1: Fair use

Copyright in education, part 2: Transformative use