During the Clinton Presidency, the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights in the Electronic Environment convened at the Conference on Fair Use to work with any copyright owners who wished to participate in the development of fair use guidelines for electronic multimedia in certain non-profit, educational settings.
The Conference was unsuccessful in its failure to gain a consensus or adopt official guidelines; however, it did provide a model for many institutions to develop their own guidelines. While the CONFU Guidelines do not carry the weight of the law, many people support the guidelines as "reasonable" measures to protect the rights of copyright owners while also advancing non-profit educational efforts through multimedia.
Educators may follow the CONFU guidelines for using copyrighted works to develop the following types of multimedia projects (ex. PowerPoint presentations):
Projects used in traditional, face-to-face classes
Projects designed for student self-study
Projects for remote, real-time instruction over a secure network (copy-proof technology must be employed)
Presentations to be delivered at peer conferences or workshops
Elements entered into an instructor's professional portfolio
At the 1994 conference, participants were divided into work groups to address:
Software (not initially included as a CONFU work group)
For information about the guidelines that each group was developing, click on the various links above.