CUNY Library Services Fair Use and Copyright Guide is a resource designed to support the CUNY community in making independent, informed decisions about copyright compliance and educational fair use. It was organized by library faculty in consultation with CUNY's Office of General Counsel. As of December 2023, although the site contains broken links, it also has links to useful guides.
Creative Commons licenses serve both the content creator and the content user. When you create content, consider applying one of these licenses to your public-facing work. Directions are available on the page.
When you use content, select works that have been licensed with the appropriate Creative Commons (or CC) license -- and remember to make the proper attributions.
You can think of transformative use in terms of purpose, context, audience and insight. If these criteria are changed, then your use may be considered transformative use.
These sections from the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use (ARL, 2012) are also useful:
"Fair use ensures that copyright owners do not have a monopoly over transformative uses of their works" and
"uses that repurpose or recontextualize copyrighted content in order to present it to a new audience for a new purpose" (p. 8)
When you need materials to illustrate your work (images, videos, audio or even charts and graphs), be sure that they are appropriately licensed for re-use. Be sure to attribute. Search for Creative Commons-licensed work on these sites:
Open Access materials have been made freely available by the copyright-holder. Most are licensed with Creative Commons licenses. These materials may be freely copied, shared and modified, as per the criteria of their CC licenses. Be sure to attribute as needed.