Recently Asked Questions

Can a school or library hand out copies of sheet music to students and keep their copies of the originals (as long as they had enough copies for each performer) to prevent the loss of the originals? The copies would be destroyed after the performance.

Can a music accompaniment part be recorded ahead of time for a performance as long as the school or library has a copy of the sheet music? Can a few modifications be added to the accompaniment as long as the heart of the work is preserved? Can this recording be shared among schools and libraries as long as each organization has a copy of the sheet music with performance rights?

We were discussing the Rule of 5 of copyright laws and wondered if it was limited by a single location or an institution. For example, if a public library has multiple branches can one branch request 5 articles from a single year from a journal and then another branch also requests articles from that same journal and year? Or did the first branch already use the maximum number of copies?

What about universities or hospital systems with multiple campuses and libraries? Thank you!

We are putting together a commemorative calendar as a fundraiser to celebrate the library's 90th year. We're using old photographs that the library has and also photographs from old yearbooks. Is there an issue with copyright infringement in doing this?

I would like to decorate a cart for use in a free books initiative I am planning for our school. Our art club is interested and willing to paint and design it. I understand that we can't have them paint covers from books but we'd like to print out book covers and then decoupage them onto parts of the cart. Would that be acceptable? We want to promote the books while respecting copyright! I've printed out book covers to promote books in the past for special events but am careful to not put them online. They are one copy for a limited amount of time. Is this different?