Skip to Main Content

Copyright & Fair Use: Presentations & Publishing

Media Librarian

Profile Photo
Farhad Moshiri
Contact:
Library-Room 205
210-829-3842
Media Collection, Music Collection, Copyright. Library liaison to Music Department.

Presentations & Copyright

It is very common that faculty participate in conferences, webinars, workshops, Zoom meetings that their audience are from different institutions. Faculty submit papers, give PowerPoint presentations, etc. to their peers that contains copyrighted materials. There are several issues concerning copyright in these situations that have to be addressed:

1. Will the paper be published in conference proceedings?

2. Are the PowerPoint slides being distributed among attendees?

3. Is the webinar, Zoom meeting, etc. recorded and made available to attendees?

4. Are all attendees from non-profit educational institutions or some of them are from commercial companies?

I most cases, faculty have to get permission from authors or publishers of copyrighted materials they have used in their presentation if the answers to the above questions are positive.

Publishing & Copyright

Copyright rules for publishing is different from teaching. In publishing, the main issue is distribution. A writer's goal is to distribute his/her work as much as possible to gain a wide range of readers for the work. Publishing can be either commercial or non-commercial.

There is no difference between publishing in print or online from the copyright point of view. All copyright rules apply to web pages, blogs and articles online the same way they are applied to print articles in journals and books. The only major difference is in online works in which the author has the option to link to a copyrighted work. Remember that linking is like giving an address. There is no permission needed from copyright holders to give the link to their materials. But if you want to download copyrighted materials in your work instead of giving the link to them, you need to get permission from copyright holders of those materials. In publishing in print you always need to get permission if you're using copyrighted works such as images, pictures, and extensive length of texts.

Jane Friedman's article: "A writer's guide to permissions and fair use" is an excellent guide for copyright issues related to publishing.

Staff LADR