Using Copyrighted Material
All Naval Academy faculty, staff, and midshipmen are responsible for abiding by local intellectual property policies and federal copyright laws. Blackboard provides a means for disseminating text, audio, and visual forms of data over the Internet. Restricted USNA-only web pages offer possibilities for the legitimate use of copyrighted material under the fair use laws and guidelines described below. Faculty, staff, and midshipmen need to use extreme caution before posting any copyrighted materials to web pages that are accessible to users outside USNA. Incorporating material from other Internet sites should also be approached with great caution.
Fair use for copyrighted materials for use in software applications must meet or follow the criteria below:
- motion media (e.g., MPEG, MP, MOV, and WMV files): 10% or 3 min.
- text: 10% or 1000 words
- music/lyrics: 10% or 30 seconds
- illustrations/photos: 10% or 5
- database: 10% or 2500 cells
For more information regarding the copyright rules for content used in Blackboard please refer to the following resources:
