Fair Use Week

Ann Thornton, Columbia University, discusses the successes in fair use over the past year, and the road ahead.

Duke University hosted an event, “Fair Use of Art and Beyond” on March 4, 2015.  This event was originally slated to take place during Fair Use Week, but due to inclement weather was rescheduled.

Fair use is the right to use, in certain circumstances, copyrighted material without seeking permission from or making a payment to the copyright holder. As part of the celebration of Fair Use Week 2015, the Office of Copyright and Scholarly Communication (OCSC) will be hosting a discussion of the fair use of works of art in research and publishing featuring Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. In addition, Kevin Smith, director of the OCSC, will be giving an update on the Georgia State University and HathiTrust law suits and how the rulings in both affect fair use. Haley Walton, Outreach Coordinator for Open Access at Duke Libraries, will also be giving a brief summary of best practices in fair use of video games in research and teaching.

The archive of the event is available here.

12 myths and realities about Fair Use (pdf document).

Sing along with this catchy music video to learn about fair use! Developed by the Media Education Lab as part of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, this song helps students understand the key concepts of transformative use.

By Renee Hobbs

It’s time for the triennial DMCA 1201 rulemaking process at the U.S.Copyright Office and that means time for another effort to protect the fair use rights of educators and students to use audiovisual content that’s locked up behind encryption for educational and fair use purposes. 

Gretchen McCord, Digital Information Law

In response to my blog posts from Monday and Tuesday this week, I received an email from an academic librarian who said that although she agrees with me “philosophically,” she needs realistic help!  She asked: 

WFMU and the Free Music Archive recorded a special episode of Radio Free Culture, a weekly podcast exploring issues at the intersection of digital culture and the arts, for fair use week 2015.

In this episode, Cheyenne Hohman, RFC host and current Director of the FMA, spoke with Ellen Duranceau, Program Manager for Scholarly Publishing, Copyright & Licensing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We talk about the four elements of fair use, how to determine if your use is fair, and talk about other issues around the edges of copyright, music, technology, and more.

Check out the podcast on WFMU, PRX, or subscribe to the Radio Free Culture via iTunes, or listen here.

Or via the playlists.

(Thanks to the freemusic archive for this write-up, which was adapted slightly from their blog.)

MIT Libraries Office of Scholarly Publishing, Copyright & Licensing

In celebration of Fair Use Week, the MIT Libraries’ Office of Scholarly Publishing, Copyright, and Licensing has launched a mobile version of the web-based Fair Use Quiz that was initially released last year.

Access the quiz here.