So far, it has proven very difficult to find a short, simple summary of Fair Use/copyright issues for students and teachers.  Fair Use of resources on the Internet is a gray area at this point in time.  Here's the best summary I've found so far.  (Thanks to Cally Flickinger, Chamberlin Elementary School, who located and Georgia Harper, University of Texas, who wrote "Copyright Law in the Electronic Environment", from which items 4, 5, and 6 below are quoted.):

1. All material on the WWW is automatically copyrighted, unless the work explicitly says that it can be copied or is available for public use. It is my understanding that work produced by government agencies, unless otherwise noted, is in the public domain and can be copied.
2. Educators and students may use copyrighted multi-media for academic purposes (i.e., not commercial).  "If an author creates a multimedia product for limited use within an institution, reliance on fair use is appropriate."  (Georgia Harper, "Copyright Issues: Multimedia and Internet Resources,"  8/30/01, http://www.utsystem.edu/OGC/IntellectualProperty/mmfruse.htm, accessed 10/15/03).
3. Because web pages are viewable by anyone on the Internet, web pages are not "for limited use within an institution," so probably fair use guidelines do not apply.  I.e., we should not use any copyright-protected material on the web without permission of the creator. 
4. Time limit on fair use: 2 years from completion of the multimedia work
5. Copies limit: generally, only 2, but joint work creators may each have a copy
6. Portion Limits:
   • Motion media--Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less
   • Text--Up to 10% or 1000 words, whichever is less
   • Poem--Up to 250 words, but further limited to:
     • three poems or portions of poems by one poet; or
     • five poems or ortions of poems by different poets from an anthology
   • Music--Up to 10% or 30 seconds, whichever is less
   • Photos and images--Up to 5 works from one author; up to 10% or 15 works, whichever is less, from a collection
   • Database information--Upto 10% or 2500 field or cell entries, whichever is less
7. If copyrighted material is used, the source should be noted. (See Citing Internet Sources, below)

• Another version of these Fair Use Guidelines, also written by Georgia Harper, can be viewed here. This is part of a page on "Fair Use Guidelines for Educational Multimedia", developed at the 1996 Conference on Fair Use.

Other Copyright and Fair Use Resource Pages:

• To respond to "But I found it on the Internet...", see Using Materials from the Internet--What are the Rules?--another well-written article by Georgia Harper.
• For an overall guide to copyright issues for K-12 educators, see Copyright for Educators.
• Copyright and Fair Use--Links to lots of web sites (Stanford University)

Citing Internet Resources:

• Grade 1-6 Guide--A quick guide to citing sources for grades 1 - 6 from the Nauset (MA) public schools
• Citing Internet Resources--A guide from Classroom Connect

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