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Fair Use Guidelines for Closed Online Classrooms: Public Domain Content

This guide provides information on how to assess fair use for inclusion of materials in a course that is only available to students enrolled in the course (closed online classroom). It also provides links to helpful resources on open educational resources

Public Domain Content

Finding Public Domain Content

When something is in the public domain, it's copyright is either expired or it doesn't have one of the conditions of copyright to qualify for protection (creativity, originality, and fixed in a tangible medium). Individuals can also dedicate their copyrighted works to the public domain by applying a CC0 "license" to the work.

It's not as likely that you'll be able to find educational materials in the public domain, unless the course has a focus on history or archival works, but if you think there might be something, you can check out these resources: