Faculty can place copyrighted materials (articles, excerpts from books, images, etc.) in their course website, provided that they comply with fair-use guidelines. While these guidelines don't have force of law, they are used by many institutions, and they are endorsed by many major publishers and the U.S. Copyright Office.

Faculty should use these guidelines to determine fair-use:

1. The purpose (commercial or nonprofit educational).
   
2. The nature of the copyrighted work.
   
3. The amount of the portion used.
   
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market value of the work.

Faculty should read the Summary of Multimedia Fair-Use Guidelines, published by Georgia Harper of the University of Texas System and supported by the General Counsel's Office at Boston University.

In addition to meeting the four criteria above, faculty placing copyrighted materials in their course website must also:

1. Restrict access to the copyrighted materials to only those students in their class.

   If you use WebCT, all the materials are automatically restricted to just those students in your class.

   If you use CourseInfo, you must restrict the access yourself. The following instructions assume that you will put your materials in the Course Documents section of your course.
   
   

   1. From the Control Panel, under Site Management, select Course Options. A new Course Options menu will appear.
      
   2. Under Change Button Availability, you will see Course Documents listed.
      
   3. Select S (for secure), meaning only those students enrolled in your course can view the materials that you put in the Course Documents section of your course.
      
   4. Click Submit. That's it.

   If your course is on the Web outside these products, you must restrict access yourself.
   
   

2. Regulations mandate that copyrighted materials that are not copy protected be online for only 15 days.

   If you use WebCT, you can set a release from start date to end date.

   If you use In CourseInfo, you must either make the materials unavailable or remove them. The following instructions assume that you will put your materials in the Course Documents section of your course.
   
   

   1. From the Control Panel, under Page Editors, select Course Documents. A list of the items in your Course Documents folder will appear.
      
   2. To remove an item, click Remove Item next to it, then click OK. The item is removed.

      To make an item unavailable, click Modify Item. On the new page, under item 2 (Availability), select No, then Submit.

3. You should indicate source, copyright, etc., on all copyrighted materials.