Fair Use Fundamentals

This UCLA infographic has examples of creators whose famous works were inspired by other sources. In each case, was the creator’s use fair or foul?

This week is Fair Use Week, an annual international celebration in which sites all around the web will be talking about the important legal doctrines of fair use and fair dealing, which are the copyright laws that make transformative works legal. This week’s activities are designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and help explain and promote wider understanding of these doctrines.

This year for Fair Use Week, the Organization for Transformative Works will be hosting a Virtual Q&A, and we want your questions! Ask OTW Legal anything about the law of fair use and fair dealing and how they relate to fandom and fanworks. Every question you were afraid to ask: now is the time to ask it! (With one exception: we can’t give you personal legal advice.) So ask away! Send your questions to Legal@Transformativeworks.org and we’ll answer your questions in public posts.

Gerald Beasley, Vice-Provost and Chief Librarian at the University of Alberta, discusses the purpose of copyright legislation.

Celebrate Fair Use Week 2016! See how UMass Amherst Libraries uses fair use to make our collections freely available to the world.

Slides promoting student projects taking advantage of fair use – a joint venture between CMU’s Libraries and IDeATe program.

Jonathan Band discusses evolving library perspectives on orphan works legislation in the European Union and the United States in his article “Thanks, But No Thanks” (PDF document).

The University of Tennessee Libraries describes its consideration of fair use while digitizing the Postcards from the Great Smoky Mountain Collection.

Texas A&M Libraries describes their approach to empowering faculty to use fair use.

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. 

Copyright lawyer Jonathan Band details cases of fair use in everyday life (PDF document).

Post by Molly Schwartz, Associate Fellow, R Street Institute

Is it legal for me to publish a blog post with this title? Am I violating copyright law? I am, after all, reusing lyrics from the chorus of a popular Beatles song. The recognizability and cultural resonance of the lyrics is exactly what makes it an appealing title for me to use.

Jessica Vosgerchian is a 3L at Harvard Law School and a Copyright Fellow for the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication. She has worked on copyright issues in the public and private sectors. 

Last September, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit diverged from the judicial trend of treating “transformative use” as the most important element in the test to determine whether a defendant’s use of another’s work was fair, and so not infringement under the Copyright Act. In Kienitz v. Sconnie Nation LLC, 766 F.3d 756 (7th Cir. 2014) (Kienitz II), the Court affirmed the lower court’s holding that the defendants’ manipulation of a photo for a t-shirt design constituted fair use but employed a different interpretation of the fair use test.

Post by Chelsea Brooks, Student Attorney, Samuelson-Gluskho Tech Law & Policy Clinic

This week the Samuelson-Gluskho Tech Law & Policy Clinic celebrates fair use in this semester’s inagural podcast. Student Attorney Chelsea Brooks, and Student Technologist Jeffrey Ward-Bailey present an interview with Ian Hales. Ian is an instructor of Technology, Arts & Media (TAM) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Ian teaches sections of TAM’s introductory projects course, as well as the majority of the senior capstone courses within his department. Additionally, he teaches specialized electives in both motion-based design and social media management. 

Post by Carrie Russell, Director, Program on Public Access to Information, American Library Association

In honor of Fair Use Week 2015, and because I have been talking and writing about fair use for a long time, I thought I would tell you a couple of stories that I encountered on my fair use journey.