Fair use?

We are a UK based website that publishes teaching resources for English and Media Teachers. All of the resources we publish are contributed by working teachers to whom we pay a royalty fee ( a percentage of our revenue) . All the resources on the site are made available free as PDF's. We also have a subscription facility. Subscribers get access to the same resources in Microsoft Office format - allowing teachers to amend and target the resources for their own needs. We offer subscriptions to individual teachers and to school departments as an annual fee. Essentially we are a collective library of teaching resources. We are of course a commercial organisation, but the fee's charged by some rights owners would make publishing some resources impossible.  

The resources are for use in a classroom and are not suitable for use other than within Education. We try to avoid any copyright infringement by keeping extracts to 250 words and rarely publish whole texts of poems. However, given the nature of the resources it is sometimes necessary to investigate texts and poetry in detail - and to that it is often necessary to carry the bulk of a piece of prose or poem. Particularly for use on interactive whiteboards in classrooms for whole class teaching exercise. Do you (collective wisdom) think that we are in a position to claim 'Fair use' if we make these resources available free to any visitors to the site, in any format?  

Secondly we are starting to receive a large number of resources from media teachers - who by the very nature of their teaching are required to analyse film and moving image. If we were to publish stills from films (for example showing long shot, close up, lighting direction) will we be required to obtain permissions from the director, producer, distributor and star of the film? Or again could we be in a position to claim Fair Use.  

?  

Michele Appleton
michele[_at_]teachit.co.uk
Teachit (UK) Ltd   Received on Mon Jul 24 2006 - 20:30:46 GMT