Principle 4, Scenario 1
You are a student who is excited to design your ePortfolio. You decide to include artwork from your favorite street artist alongside your bio on the homepage. While the artwork does not have a re-use license at the bottom, you decide to use it anyway. You attribute each piece of art individually at the bottom of the page in APA format with a link to the artist’s website. However, when you show your ePortfolio to your educator, you are accused of breaking copyright law.
You are confused—there’s a full citation at the bottom of the page. While much of your academic career has prepared you to navigate attribution and citation, very little time has been spent on copyright. Your educator asks you to reconsider the homepage design. Specifically, they ask you to reflect on the following questions: is the artwork used in such a way that you can argue fair use? Should you replace this artwork with artwork from the public domain or artwork with clearer re-use licensing? What are the potential risks if you keep the page’s design as-is?
After concluding that this artwork is protected by copyright and you are not using it in a way that suggests fair use, you redesign the page to include an open-access work instead. You still clearly attribute this work to its creator but know that you have permission to re-use it on your personal ePortfolio.