© Fair use
"The fair use of a copyrighted work . . . for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
The fair use doctrine is a defense to the Copyright Act that protects what courts have defined as reasonable uses for prior works, such as educational research and the broader promotion of arts and sciences. The principle allows people to build upon the ideas of others in a way that promotes progress.
One of the most common fair use exceptions is the educational use of copyrighted material. Other examples might be quoting passages from a book in a book review, use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied, or a summary of an address or article.
There are several factors used to determine whether a particular use of copyrighted material satisfies fair-use tests, including:
- the nature of the use, particularly whether or not it is for commercial or non-commercial use
- the nature of the copyrighted work
- how much of the original copyrighted work is used
- the potential for adverse effect upon the market for the copyrighted work through its use
It is important to remember that fair use is not to be construed as a license for educational institutions to ignore copyright and freely reproduce any materials used for an educational purpose. Academic and nonprofit institutions have both been held accountable for exceeding the limits of fair use in their use of copyrighted materials, particularly when the use involves a fee paid by the student for the course or course materials. For example, systematic duplication of materials supplied to and purchased by students in a classroom setting has often been found by the courts to constitute infringement.
