Teaching Materials

The Center for Social Media has created a set of teaching tools for professors who are interested in teaching their students about fair use. The tools include powerpoints with lecture notes, guidelines for in-class discussions and exercises, assignments and grading rubrics. We hope you'll find them useful!

Filmmakers have been successfully employing fair use, even before the Statement of Best Practices clarified their common understandings. Here are some examples of uncontested choices for fair use. They are organized here according to the principles that filmmakers articulated in the Statement, in the categories used in the Statement. These categories are only four of the most common situations for filmmakers; some uses could be hybrid, and others might fall outside these four categories. We welcome more examples at socialmedia@american.edu.

The Media Education Lab at Temple University has created a whole set of Curriculum Materials for teaching and understanding copyright and fair use. The materials include lesson plans, songs, case studies, and videos. If you're interested in learning more about Fair Use in Media Literacy Education, make sure to check out these excellent materials!

In your syllabus, you often have some information on copyright. Here is some language to include in that section, specifically on fair use. This language has been reviewed by lawyers, including law professor Peter Jaszi of American University’s Washington College of Law and Michael Donaldson of Donaldson and Hart law firm, and it has been approved by the University Film and Video Association for use by its members.

Download:

fairuse_syllabi.pdf