Copyright law is complex and subject to varying interpretations.

The very nature of Copyright law often presents more questions than answers. There is an ever growing list of regularly changing media copyright information that can be tough to navigate. We hope we can provide at least some of the answers, or point you toward those who can. Most importantly, understand it is your responsibility to know your rights under Copyright law.

Westminster College Copyright Handbook:

Currently available only to Westminster students, faculty and staff logged in to my.westminster by clicking here.

Westminster College Policy on Copyright:

Westminster College fully respects all rights that exist in any material protected by the copyright laws of the United States while also encouraging usage of the material that furthers the educational mission. We believe that a balance must exist between the rights of the producers and distributors of works and the privileges of users who benefit from their use. To accomplish this, the college expects compliance with copyright laws from all members of the Westminster community while concurrently intending that faculty, staff, administration, and students take full advantage of all relevant licenses, exemptions, and exclusions that are provided for under copyright law. If there is no applicable license, exemption, or exclusion to permit use of the material, faculty, staff, administration, and students must obtain permission for the anticipated use from the copyright holder. No copies of any type will be made by Westminster College that are prohibited by the copyright law, fair-use guidelines, Licensing Agreements, or proprietor’s permission. 

General

Title Description

Other useful sites

The law and related laws contained in Title 17 of the US Code, search copyright records, learn how to register a work, current fees, publications, forms, licensing and news.
Reprinted from Library of Congress Copyright Office's Circular 21 "Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians", Sec. F, p.22.
The complete law, with full-text search capability.
A comprehensive, full-text, searchable website offering copyright law overview and primary materials, current legislation, cases and issues, and other Internet resources.
A nonprofit organization providing copyright licensing services to academic and other organizations as well as individual users.
"...endeavors to provide real world, practical and relevant copyright information of interest to infonauts, net surfers, web spinners, content providers, musicians, appropriationists, activists, infringers, outlaws, and law abiding citizens."
Offers current developments, cases, statistics, service organizations, etc. related to multimedia law.
Maintained by the Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA), which represents the six major US film and television-producing studios, that summarizes the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) and offers a directory of ways to get audio-visual content legally.
SWANK, a major non-theatrical movie distributor, online CE/CME education distributor and public performance licensing agent for venues where feature movies are shown publicly offers this statement on using feature films in public settings.
Discusses the permissibility of the streaming of an entire film to a remote non-classroom location.
Content and resources found on this site reflect the voice of LCA and its members on copyright and related intellectual property laws and treaties, nationally and internationally. Members include the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, and the Association of College and Research Libraries.
The most current searchable revision of copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code).