Copyright and Fair Use‎

As liable members of the American University of Sharjah, faculty, staff and students are obligated to abide by the provisions of the copyright law as far as possible. Make sure that you are in compliance with copyright law as it pertains to fair use.

Our Services

AUS Library offers the following services to AUS faculty, students, and staff:

• Providing information about U.S. and UAE copyright laws and fair use
• Answering copyright questions
• Helping faculty use copyrighted materials in the classroom legally
• Creating coursepacks

Please note that the information on the website is not meant to be legal advice.

Contact Us: copyright@aus.edu

Copyright is a form of legal protection that covers both published and unpublished works such as books, sound or video recordings, art works, photographs and other printed or digital material. The copyright owner of a work could be the author, the publisher or any other person or entity having legal ownership. In most cases, permission must be obtained from the current copyright owner in order to use any of these works.

Copyright can be a complex issue but it’s very important that we try to understand how it works so copyrighted materials can be used legally at AUS. Although we provide services to help you comply with copyright law, the ultimate responsibility for respecting copyright rests with you.

Here at AUS we consider both U.S. and UAE copyright law. Please use this guide to learn more about copyright practices at AUS and email copyright@aus.edu if you have any questions.

AUS considers U.S. Copyright law as a matter of university practice since most materials in the library originate in the U.S. The U.S. Copyright Office is the best source of current information on the law. Copyright is covered under Title 17 of the United States Code.

Most UAE copyright law is based on Federal Decree-Law No. 38 (2021), which builds upon Federal Law No. 7 (2002) Amended by Law No. 32 for the year 2006 Regarding Copyright & Related Rights. Article 22 lists some fair use-type exceptions.

Cabinet Decision No.47 (2022) clarifies the registration, management, and licensing of copyrights. In the UAE, these activities are under the jurisdiction of the Emirates Reprographic Rights Management Association (ERRA).

There is no international copyright law, just international copyright treaties. The best source of information on these treaties is the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

The Berne Convention is the main international treaty on copyright. 165 countries have signed this treaty including the UAE and the US. All signatory countries must follow the minimum standard of copyright protection rules laid out in the treaty, but each country is free to add stricter rules or make specific exceptions.

One of the key points of Berne is automatic protection: a work does not need to be registered, intellectual property (IP) rights are granted automatically and are equally protected in every signatory country. Under Berne, copyright is protected for the life of the creator plus 50 years; many countries, including the U.S. and E.U., follow life plus 75 years. Another key rule in the Berne Convention is national treatment: each country has to give foreigners IP protection that is no less favorable than the protection granted to its own people.

Fair Use are exceptions to copyright law that permit the limited use of portions of a work without the copyright owner’s permission for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

Copyright practices at AUS are based on the Fair Use provisions of the United States Copyright Act. Section 107 of this Act permits the making of multiple copies of copyrighted works for classroom use in some cases.

AUS also adheres to fair use-type exceptions detailed in Article 22 of UAE Federal Decree-Law No. 38 (2021). These include the following clauses:

Clause 1. Reproducing one copy of a work for personal (non-profit, non-professional) use. This excludes works of fine or applied art, and works of architecture in public places. It also excludes computer programs, apps, and databases unless pursuant to clause 2.

Clause 4. Making a single copy of the work by a non-profit archive, library or authentication office in order to: (a) preserve the original copy or the replace a lost, damaged, or unusable original, if a replacement is impossible to obtain under reasonable conditions; (b) respond to a request from someone wishing to use the copy for study or research, provided this is done just one or on separate occasions, in cases where a reproduction license was impossible to obtain.

Clause 5. Quoting short paragraphs, excerpts, or analyses for the purpose of criticism, discussion or information, provided the source is cited.

Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material (i.e. citing) is not a substitution for obtaining permission.

The United States Copyright Act of 1976 identifies four factors for determining fair use:

1. The purpose and character of the use. For educational or commercial purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work. Is it a published or unpublished work, fact or fiction? Fair use generally applies to non-fiction;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

All four factors must be considered equally. More details on how these four factors evaluate a question of fair use can be found on the U.S. Copyright Office website. You can also use Columbia University’s Fair Use Checklist.

The following best practices are based on U.S. Fair Use exceptions.

Faculty MAY make multiple copies for classroom use, provided that:

• The amount copied is limited to:
  • One chapter or 10% from a book (never the entire book)
  • One article from an issue of a journal or newspaper
  • One short story, short essay or short poem
  • A chart, graph, diagram, drawing, cartoon or picture from a book, periodical or newspaper.
• Copies are distributed for one semester only.
• Copies do not exceed more than one copy per student in the course.
• Each copy includes a full citation and notice of copyright. For example:

Marwick, A. & Boyd, D. (2011). To see and be seen: Celebrity practice on Twitter. In G. Dines, J. M. Humaz, B. Yousman & L. B. Yousman (Eds.) Gender, race, and class in media: A critical reader (5th ed., pp. 525-535). Sage.

This document is authorized for use only in Dr. Jo Smith’s PSY 100 class at the American University of Sharjah for the Fall 2022 semester.

The following best practices are based on U.S. Fair Use exceptions.

Faculty MAY NOT (without copyright permission):

• Distribute copies of the same works from semester to semester.
• Distribute copies of the same material for several different courses at the same or different institutions.
• Make multiple copies of different works that could substitute for the purchase of books, publisher’s reprints, periodicals, anthologies, compilations or collective works.
• Modify, distort, change, rearrange or recombine a print or a/v work for teaching. This is a violation of the creator’s moral rights.
• Make copies of works intended to be “consumable” in the course of study or of teaching. These include workbooks, exercises, standardized tests, and test booklets and answer sheets. Students must buy their own workbooks.
• Charge the students beyond the actual cost of the photocopying.

For additional information, please see the US Copyright Office’s Reproduction of  Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians.

Showing a video, movie, or DVD in a face-to-face classroom setting is allowed under Fair Use, provided that:

• The teaching activities are conducted by a non-profit education institution
• The performance is in connection with face-to-face teaching activities.
• The performance takes place in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction.
• The person responsible for the performance has no reason to believe that the videotape was unlawfully made.
• Taped broadcast television: may be shown up to 45 days after the date of recording. After this period, off-air recordings must be erased or destroyed. (https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED232644)
• Netflix permits one-time educational screenings provided the film is a Netflix Original. To find out which titles are available for educational screenings, check that the item is listed as “Global Original” at the Netflix Media Center. AUS Library cannot provide Netflix access; faculty need to use their own Netflix accounts.
• Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and OSN+ do not include provisions for educational screenings of their videos.
• YouTube and other online videos: Before showing a video or clip, it is the faculty’s responsibility to verify the website’s policy or the copyright statement that appears with the video. Many videos available from websites such as YouTube and the CBC have usage restrictions. In addition, many videos may not be posted with the permission of the actual copyright owner, and therefore cannot be used without obtaining special permission.
• AUS Library has a subscription to Academic Video Online, which provides films, documentaries, interviews, performances and news programs that can be shown in class.
• Audio clips and podcasts can be used in class for educational purposes. You can also post a link on iLearn. However, this is only OK if the site allows for free downloads.

Streaming Video Reserves – AUS Library offers a service for Faculty to encode material to digital format for use in iLearn.

Refer to https://libguides.ala.org/copyright/video for more information on Classroom use of videos.

AUS Library ILL service adheres to guidelines developed by the Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (CONTU):

• The CONTU guidelines only apply to publications that are less than five years old.
• Libraries may provide one article, per issue, per patron without requesting copyright permission; you must request copyright permission and pay any applicable royalty fees for the second and subsequent copies.
• The borrowing library may receive copies of up to five articles from a single periodical title (as opposed to a single issue) per calendar year. Starting with the sixth copy, copyright permission and royalty fees may be required.
• No more than five copies of articles, chapters or other small portions of a non-periodical work may be received by a library in a given calendar year, during the entire period of copyright of the book. Starting with the sixth copy, copyright permission and royalty fees may be required.

Source: Interlibrary Loan: Copyright Guidelines and Best Practices

Copyrighted materials made available via Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services are for the use of AUS faculty, students and staff to support the research and educational functions of the university. The use of copyrighted materials in all formats requested via ILL must be in compliance with U.S. copyright law and the policy outlined herein. AUS Library System also provides Interlibrary Lending services to other libraries. These lending services must likewise be in compliance with U.S. copyright law and the policy outlined herein.

The copyright activities of ILL are governed primarily by Section 108 of the U.S. copyright law (Limitations on exclusive rights: reproduction by libraries and archives). Building on this, the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, CONTU, developed guidelines “to assist librarians and copyright proprietors in understanding the amount of photocopying for use in interlibrary loan arrangements permitted under the copyright law” especially regarding issues of “systematic reproduction”. The CONTU guidelines are not law and have never been reviewed or revised despite the many changes in technology; however, they still serve as suggestions that help librarians interpret the ILL provision in the Copyright Act. They also help reassure copyright holders that ILL will not replace periodical subscriptions and book purchases by libraries. Under the CONTU guidelines for delivering photocopies through ILL, the borrowing library tracks patron requests and, once the guidelines are exceeded, the borrowing library reports the usage and pays the required royalty fees.

In some cases, the provisions of Section 107 (Fair Use) may also be applied to ILL activities. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair use, that user will be liable for copyright infringement. AUS Library System reserves the right to refuse a request if, in its judgment, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law.

The Fair Use provision of the U.S. copyright law permits some material to be posted on iLearn and integrated applications (such as Perusall).

You can post links to articles and e-books that are available electronically through the AUS library. Linking is always the best solution because it avoids most copyright issues and the links can stay in iLearn for multiple semesters. For instructions on how to link to library resources please see our Linking to Resources page. You may also post links to freely available/open access material on the Internet.

Videos have to be streamed on iLearn, not made available for download. For more on the library’s streaming procedures please see our Streaming Video Reserves page. 

If you want to post a document or PDF, such as a scanned excerpt from a print book or an article uploaded from a library database, you need to contact copyright@aus.edu so our copyright team can check the permissions. Please follow this procedure before uploading library materials onto iLearn or integrated applications.

If you need to share a scanned portion of a print book or journal with your class, please follow these guidelines:

• Do we have access to the online version? Provide a link instead.
• Can the library purchase the e-book version? We will opt for that instead. See our Suggest A Book request form.
• Only post materials on iLearn where they can only be accessed by students enrolled in the class.
• Limit the amount of the work posted: one chapter or 10% from a book (whichever is less) or one article from a journal issue.
• Post the item for only as long as it is required for class discussion. We recommend removing the item after 2 weeks.
• Include a full citation and terms of use disclaimer on the PDF. 
• Refer to our Classroom Handouts page for more detailed guidelines on recommended amounts and disclaimer text.
• Email copyright@aus.edu to request permission. We can scan the work and add the necessary citation and terms of use disclaimer to the PDF.