Westmoreland County Community College Library: Copyright: Using Print/Images/Media: Copyright

Copyright Course (LOGIN WITH YOUR EMAIL)
- From Vector
- 24 minutes
Intended to be a helpful guide to aid educators in making good choices about content use for classroom instruction as well as for reference. This course covers basic knowledge about copyright laws, print and audio materials, visual and multimedia materials, and the internet and digital media.

Copyright is the legal protection that creators have over the things they create. It's a way to balance the rights of the creator with the public good over the control of intellectual property. Under copyright law, creators have the exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute their work as they see fit for a period of time.

After that time has passed, the work is released into the public domain, where anyone can use, adapt, or reproduce the work without getting permission or paying a fee.

Fair use is the ability to use copyrighted work without permission, but only in certain ways and specific situations.

What is Copyright?
Learn about the basics of copyright from the U.S. Copyright Office

Be Responsible!

This guide contains resources for learning using content created by others.
The information given here is for general information use only. It is not legal advice.
Avoiding copyright infringement is the responsibility of the individual user. Being ignorant of the law will not protect you against a claim of infringement.

Copyright Overview
The Stanford University Copyright & Fair Use Overview is comprised of content from NOLO
The Librarian's Copyright Companion

Copyright and AI

Copyright and Artificial Intelligence: Part 1: Digital Replicas
- July 2024
- From the U.S. Copyright Office

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This part of the report responds to the proliferation of videos, images or audio recordings that have been digitally created or manipulated to realistically but falsely depict an individual.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence: Part 2: Copyrightability
- January 2025

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This part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI.

Organizations

Artists' Rights Society
A copyright, licensing, and monitoring organization for visual artists in the United States
Author's Guild
-America's oldest and largest professional organization for writers
-Provides advocacy on issues of free expression and copyright protection
Author's Guild: Human Authored Certification
"...allows an author to certify that their book is created by a human. “Human Authored” means that the text of the book was written by a human and not generated by AI, with the exception of minimal, trivial uses, such as AI applications that check spelling and grammar or for brainstorming or research."

Recommendations

Have ideas or suggestions? We encourage recommendations for additional resources not currently listed in this guide. Members of the college community are encouraged to email suggestions to library@westmoreland.edu