Definitions and terms

This is what you may need to know when it comes to school exemptions to copyright:

Section 108:  a list of special exceptions for libraries in regards to copying various materials and situations.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act:  is a United States copyright law which implements 2 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization.  It, then, criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works whether or not there is an actual infringement of copyright itself.  Also, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

Obsolete:  (in terms of the DMCA)--when a machine or device necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is not longer reasonable available in the commercial marketplace.  An example could be microfilm or Beta format videotapes.

Interlibrary Loan--The sharing of materials between libraries outside of the home library.  The requesting library is outside of the common funding source as the receptor library.

Intralibrary Loan--The sharing of materials between libraries who a part of a whole.  For example, the high school library loaning materials to the elementary library in the same district.    

CONTU Guidelines--[Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works] established for the operational procedures that should be followed in interlibrary loan copying to assure compliance with the copyright law.

CONTU defines that clause to mean that requesting and receiving more than five articles from a given periodical within any calendar year for a total of six or more copies of articles published within five years prior to the date of request would be too many.

CONTU does not give any guidance to libraries for copying material older than five years.

CONTU specifies that if a library has in force or has entered a subscription for a periodical, but it is not immediately available, the library may consider the copy obtained from another library as if made from its own collection.

CONTU stipulates that all interlibrary loan requests must be accompanied by a copyright compliance statement by the requesting library.

CONTU stipulates that the requesting library must maintain records of all requests and of the fulfillment of these requests. The records must be retained for three complete calendar years after the end of the calendar year in which the requests were made.

Rule of Five--a rule to guide librarians in tracking appropriate levels of interlibrary loan copying.

• Rule of five: Only five articles from a periodical title published in the last five years may be obtained in any calendar year or Royalty Charges will apply.
• No more than one article in an individual issue of a periodical may be obtained in any calendar year or Royalty Charges will apply.

Public Domain-is one for which no copyright is held, thus it can be freely used, copied, or distributed by anyone