Below are answers to some legal questions you might have.
Sheila B., Exchange Gardener
In general, you may copy materials you have purchased for instructional use in "face to face" teaching situations, provided you are not trying to AVOID buying the right number of resources. So no, you can't make 10 copies of a worksheet from a curriculum publisher who sells packets of worksheets, unless their materials give you the permission.
You MAY use videos in face to face teaching situations, regardless of the dire warnings provided by the FBI Warning, or licensing websites. "face to face teaching situations" are Federally protected/exempted use. Please note: "worship" is considered a public performance, not a teaching situation. Publicly "performing" (showing) a video is copyright infringement, unless you buy a license. Same with music.
You can copy lessons from rotation.org because we've given you the permission to do so. However, you may not POST copyrighted material to our site without the original author's/publisher's permission.
You may post or otherwise create and distribute summaries, extracts, and generic simplifications of lessons, recipes, and descriptions of copyrighted materials. You just can't distribute/post the author's unique way of expressing their ideas/concepts. Words and ideas are not copyright-able. The unique description of ideas is copyright-able!
Likewise, you may not copy published lessons from "not free" lessons and give them to your teachers in an effort to save money or to not have to buy the correct number of copies. You can make a copy of a lesson resource you own to give to a teacher, and keep the original for yourself, because that's "fair use" ....to archive/preserve the original.
However, you cannot borrow a lesson purchased by "the church down the street" and make copies of multiple lessons for your own use. That's unfair use which "harms" the author's right to make a living. "FAIR USE" and "HARM" to the author's right to make a living from their works are historic copyright principles. Biblical ones too!
Beware of YouTube
Video and music from youtube may be illegally posted and infringing the producer's copyright. Access does not equal permission.
Out of Print does not mean "out of copyright."
Just because you can't find a resource to buy for yourself, doesn't mean you can copy it from another copy.
