"I believe there is an exception for educational, noncommercial purposes. Whether this applies to public bulletin boards and private listservs as well as classrooms, and whether permission must be obtained, I am not sure.

If the publisher includes a notice that any reproduction will be prosecuted (the really greedy, litigious ones do this), I wouldn't touch it. However, whether the Times or Daily News would sue a cycling club for posting a few articles pertaining to cycling, and whether they could convince a jury that their interests were being substantially harmed, is questionable. More likely they would send a cease and desist letter first.

Clearly objectionable would be to plagiarize or alter electronic copy and not to indicate author or copyright owner.

Here's a link to Web sites on the subject of copyright.
http://access.k12.wv.us/manual/urlcopyr.htm

Also check out this one: http://www.chillingeffects.org/
According to my quick read, it is not impermissible to use copyrighted material for intellectual purposes, although the circumstances in which it is appropriate are not clear-cut.

""Copyright and Fair Use
When a copyright holder sues a user of the work for infringment, one defense that the user may have is the defense of fair use. Under the fair use doctrine, it is not an infringement for one to use the copyrighted works of another in some circumstances. However, it is difficult to define what exactly constitutes fair use because courts consider the defense on a case by case basis, and the analysis of the defense varies with the facts of each case.

Although the fair use defense was available for many years, the doctrine was first codified by Congress in the Copyright Act of 1976 in Section 107. Section 107 gives a non-exhaustive list of examples of when the fair use defense could be successful. The list includes criticism, comment, scholarship, research, news reporting and teaching as uses that may be fair.

The list also gives four guiding factors courts will consider in deciding whether a use is fair or not. These factors are

the purpose and character of the use,

the nature of the copyrighted work,

the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and

the effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Of course, even with these factors, it is problematic and often unyielding to try to predict what uses a court will deem fair."""