How can you copy and paste from a website within copyright guidelines?

Answer 1

In most cases it isn't. Bear in mind that copyright allows for what is known as "fair use". It is not an absolute prohibition on all forms of copying. Furthermore, not all material in every website is copyrighted anyway. Obviously, some abuse is still possible, which would be considered copyright infringement.

Answer 2

Copyright law is intentionally vague on what constitutes fair use, so there's no straight answer on how much you can copy. It depends on what it is, what you're using it for, and more--much the same as copying from a book or magazine.

But for the sake of an example, let's say you're writing a paper on bananas. You hit up Google, and you end up at a page on Purdue's website. You can't just copy and paste the whole thing, because that would be infringing. You can't copy and paste "Banana leaves are widely used as plates and for lining cooking pits and for wrapping food for cooking or storage," without citing it, because that would be plagiarism.

You can take that sentence, or even that paragraph, and include it as a quote, and attribute it to the Purdue page. A small amount, properly cited, for educational purposes, is usually fine. You just have to agree on what "a small amount" means.

If you want to include a photo in your paper, you hit up Google and find a little over five million of them. But whether they're marked as such or not, almost all of them will be protected by copyright. In this case, you don't want to use just a small portion of it, you need to use the whole thing, so you need to find one you can use without a license. You can do that through the Creative Commons website, but you can also do it through Flickr. Next to the search box, click "advanced search," scroll to the bottom of the page, and check the box for "only search within Creative Commons-licensed content." You'll get about 75,000 hits for "bananas," which is admittedly a lot less than five million, but still a pretty overwhelming selection. Here again, you need to attribute the photo properly.

In general, you just need to use small amounts, use public domain or Creative Commons whenever possible, and include a proper attribution.