Open Educational Resources (OER) are either in the public domain or free to use, as indicated most often by a Creative Commons (CC) license. In addition to two public domain licenses (CC0 and Public Domain Mark), CC offers six licenses that make works available under different conditions, or levels of "openness," which you can see in the chart below Learn more about the different types of licenses or best practices for attribution when using CC-licensed materials.
According to the US Copyright Office, "Fair Use" is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.
Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:
For more information, see detailed explanations from the US Copyright Office: https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html
"Ask The Lawyer" is a collaboration between Buffalo-based intellectual property attorney Stephanie "Cole" Adams (of the Law Office of Stephanie Adams, PLLC) and the consortia of Western New York's regional libraries, Western New York Library Resources Council (WNYLRC).