Hi Rebecca,

 

Check out http://www.copyright.gov/ - it's pretty thorough and should be able to answer most of your questions.  If you've got specific questions that you don't see addressed, you might want to contact your institution's General Counsel (or whatever they might call the 'legal department'), which should be able to help you sort out those particular issues. 

Rebecca: If your college has an attorney, meet with him or her and explain your concerns.

 

I highly recommend the small book by Jay Althouse, formerly (and perhaps still) available from Alfred. It not only spells out the rights and responsibilities clearly under Fair Use, but goes into some background on the law and the way it has evolved. It may not be 100% up to date, since the law itself evolves and is a moving target.

 

The Fair Use Guidelines themselves can probably be obtained from the Music Publishers Association, so check their website. (And be aware that the Guidelines are NOT part of he law itself. They are Guidelines that the publishers agreed to, and they are very specific.)  A while back someone expressed an opinion that they did not apply to colleges, but since NASM was part of the original meetings, they clearly do.  In general, what you do in the course of instruction is covered by those Guidelines, including your public performances. Your college should have blanket licenses, of course, to cover external performances and those for which admission is charged. And there is NO FAIR USE for recordings. Schools are subject to the same requirements as everyone else. But recording as an academic class and recording of academic performances should be fine as long as copies are not made and distributed.

 

I'm sure you already know that you should not be making or using photocopies of published music, but that's just the tip of the iceburg!

 

All the best,

John

 

http://www.menc.org/resources/view/copyright-center