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I Found a Video. Am I Allowed to Use It? A Brief Primer on Copyright and Intellectual Property

I Found a Video. Am I Allowed to Use It? A Brief Primer on Copyright and Intellectual Property

I found a video. Am I allowed to use it?

Short answer for YouTube and similar videos posted online

  • For any online video, you may freely embed or link to it on Canvas or elsewhere. Because you are simply sending viewers to see the video where it has been posted by its owner, there is no copyright problem with this practice. However, you may not use third-party software to download or record that video and re-distribute it unless the video’s rightful owner says that you may do so.

Fair Use

  • In most other cases, like displaying portions of a DVD to a class, whether you may show the video largely depends on whether or not you fall within the “fair use” doctrine. The concept of “fair use” under U.S. copyright law makes it possible to use copyrighted material for comment, critique, teaching, and similar purposes depending on a number of factors:
  1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (not-for-profit uses are more likely to fall within the doctrine than uses aimed to generate revenue from the copyrighted work);
  2. The nature of the copyrighted work (e.g., whether it is factual or creative in nature) (the more the work can be described as creative as opposed to simple reportage of facts, the more likely that the use is prohibited);
  3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (using a short clip is more appropriate than displaying an entire film, for example); and
  4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (in other words, is your use going to reduce the likelihood of the copyright holder losing money from the sale or display of the video?).

Public Domain

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