Norfolk State University Copyright 101
The Norfolk State University Communications and Marketing Office will provide information about best practices involving copyrighted material, but the decision to use them will be solely on the department making the request. If any University department chooses to use copyrighted materials, they will be responsible for any fines or legal consequences should the owner of these materials choose to sue the university for copyright infringement.
First, determine who owns the material you want to post. Typical examples of copyright “owners” include:
- Author of a written work
- Photographer who took the picture
- Composer of a song or melody
- Videographer of a video
- Journal/publisher of a published work
- Creator of artwork
- Programmer of software
- Employer of any of these people if the work was done in connection with their employment
How do you get permission to post copyrighted material?
- Contact the owner
- Contact the Copyright Clearance Center at www.copyright.com
- Contact NSU General Counsel’s office for assistance with NSU-recognized social media accounts at (757) 823-2293
- Could posting of the material be considered a “fair use” under the Copyright Act?
Use is likely fair if:
- Character of the use is nonprofit, educational, or personal (Each social media platform will determine this)
- Nature of the material used is factual published material
- Only a small amount of the material will be posted
- Impact on the market for the material is very small
Use is likely not fair if:
- Character of the use is commercial (promoting a product or service, charging to access the copyrighted material, advertisements)
- Nature of the material used is imaginative and/or unpublished
- The majority of the material will be posted (for example, an entire book chapter instead of a quoted sentence)
- Use detrimentally impacts the market for the original
- Use was “fair” at one time, but has been repeatedly reused or more widely distributed, or the copyright owner has requested that the use be limited or discontinued. For example, use of a portion of a journal article or a photo may have been Fair Use one time, but used annually for the same event or purpose, loses its Fair Use character. What are the penalties for infringing someone’s copyright?
- Typically, a copyright holder’s first response to an act of infringement is to send you a “cease and desist” letter demanding that you stop infringement. The copyright holder can go to court to get an injunction or a court order requiring you to remove the infringing material from your account, page or profile. Additionally, a copyright holder can file a claim for actual damages suffered by the copyright holder as a result of your infringement.
- If the copyright has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, the copyright holder can file a claim for “statutory damages” without proving that the copyright holder was actually harmed by the infringement. An award of statutory damages can be as little as $750 or as much as $30,000. If the copyright holder can prove that you knew the work was protected under the law, an award of damages can be as much as $150,000.
- When you post copyrighted materials on social media media, they automatically obtain a license to use those materials, commonly known as an Intellectual Property, or “IP” license. They can use this IP license to share the materials all over the world without your further permission and without paying you any royalties. Some websites also reserve the right to change, commercialize and publicly perform or display the materials. This IP license ends when you delete the materials or terminate your account unless the materials have been shared with others and they have not deleted it. This could mean that the social media website effectively owns a license to use the materials you posted, for whatever purpose it desires, forever.
- Questions about copyright? For copyright, fair use and faculty/staff ownership of works at NSU, contact NSU’s General Counsel at (757) 823-2293.