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Creating Multimedia Content from Anywhere

Finding Media That is Okay To Use

Almost everything is copyrighted and requires permission from its author to use. There are, however, some exceptions:
"Specially-licensed" Creative commons icon- There is a lot of media that has been made available for anyone to use, waiving the need to obtain direct permission from the author. For example, a very common license is an "Attribution" license, meaning that you can use the media for any purpose as long as you give credit to the creator somewhere in your work. The non-profit organization Creative Commons offers a variety of attribution licenses that creators apply to their work to make available for public use. Learn more about Creative Commons licensing. Search for works with a Creative Commons license.
"Public Domain" - Works that are not copyrighted and are publically available are considered in the "public domain." Works exist in the public domain usually for one of three reasons: 1) they are very old, 2) the copyright has expired, 3) the work was created by the federal government. It can be hard to determine if something is in the public domain, so your best bet is to try to find a licensed alternative. Learn more about when different works entered the public domain. Find out if the work you want to use is copyrighted.

 

CITING CREATIVE COMMONS-LICENSED WORK:

Provide a text document with all citations. Follow your professor's standards.

Creative Commons graphic

 

"Adding the appropriate credit information to your [audio assignment] could be as simple as a list of the works used at the end with their associated license. Eg:

 

This podcast features the following songs:
“Desaprendere (Treatment)” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
“Some Other Song” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

 

If possible, it is desirable to make the title, author, and license links the viewer can follow."
 
This information is courtesy of the Creative Commons Wiki. To read more, see this article "Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licenses: Users." 

 

Understand Fair Use

"Fair Use" is a provision in US copyright law that imposes limits and exceptions to the exclusive rights of authors / creators.

It means that you can use copyright-protected media without asking for permission if is considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

Fair Use Guidelines for student projects:

  • Always give full credit - In your citation you should include the creator, title of the work, date of publication, and URL. (Note: "youtube.com" should never be cited as the creator - it is always the user or company who made the original content)
  • Only use a small amount (e.g. 5-10 seconds of video or music)
  • If shared online, make your video private. Do not make your project publicly-available -- for example, there are settings in Youtube.com to make videos "unlisted" so that only people with a link will ever see your video.

Learn more about Fair Use:

 

 

CITING COPY-RIGHTED MATERIAL:

Copyright symbol made of puzzle pieces

Credit all copyrighted material that you use in your audio assignment/podcast, including all found audio, sound fx, and music. In your citation you should include the creator, title of the work, date of publication, and URL. Consult your professor about what citation style to use: APA, Chicago/Turabian, or MLA.

Follow your instructor's directions for presenting this material. You could have the information in text form or cite material orally at the end of your audio recording.

Finding Images

Finding Audio

Finding Video

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