Where did The OCW Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare come from?
In January 2009, MIT OpenCourseWare embarked upon a project to explore the development of community standards among OCW producers regarding the application of fair use under U.S. copyright law to our publishing. MIT OpenCourseWare participated in the development of this document, and it is modeled on prior Codes of Best Practices for Fair Use produced by the Center for Social Media. Fair use can contribute to a richer, more complete educational resource, so it is vital to the creators and users of OCW to have a standard set of practices to guide application of fair use. A small group of U.S. universities worked with MIT OpenCourseWare, under the guidance of Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi of American University, two experts in the field of copyright law and the application of fair use, to develop a Code of Best Practices specifically tailored to courseware made available from U.S. producers under a Creative Commons license. The authors of this document, the Committee of Practitioners o
