Hoping to clear up the confusion over the "fair use" of digital materials in teaching and learning, a panel of university professors has developed a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education."

The document clarifies how fair use applies to the most common situations where media-literacy educators make use of copyrighted materials in their work. It offers guidance for instructors so they can make informed fair-use judgments.

The guidance comes as research suggests educators are shying away from using digital materials in their classrooms, fearing they could be sued for copyright violation (see "Fair-use confusion threatens media literacy").

Created though a partnership among the Media Education Lab at Temple University, the Center for Social Media at American University (AU), and AU's Washington College of Law, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation, the code identifies five principles of consensus about acceptable practices for the fair use of copyrighted materials, wherever and however it occurs: in K-12 schools, higher-education institutions, nonprofit groups that offer media-education programs for children and youth, and adult-education programs.

The code is the result of a series of meetings with more than 150 members of leading educational associations, including the National Association for Media Literacy Education and the National Council of Teachers of English. Profs. Renee Hobbs of Temple's Media Education Lab, Peter Jazzi of the Washington College of Law's Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and Patricia Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media coordinated the effort.

Fair use is critical to understand, say the code's developers, because copying, quoting, and reusing existing cultural material can help generate new cultural treasures. Yet a climate of fear and misunderstanding about copyright law--created, in part, because new ways of sharing digital information are emerging, just as copyright holders are trying to capture new revenue from various sources--detracts from the quality of teaching and learning, they say.

Among a series of questions judges ask when considering fair-use violations, one of the most important is "whether the user acted reasonably and in good faith, in light of general practice in his or her particular field," according to the code's developers. Educators' reliance on fair use therefore will be helped by this code of best practices, which will serve as a documentation of common understandings drawn from the experience of educators themselves and supported by legal analysis.

Here are the code's five principles:

1. Employing copyrighted material in media-literacy lessons: Educators can use copyrighted material and make it available to learners in class, in workshops, in informal mentoring and teaching settings, and on school-related web sites. However, educators should choose material that is germane to the project and use only what is necessary for the educational goal or purpose.