Copyright for Faculty

The Fair Use Doctrine allows exemption to copyright protections for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.

Fair use is a concept embedded in U.S. law that recognizes that certain uses of copyright-protected works do not require permission from the copyright holder. (See Title 17, section 107)

What Determines Fair Use?

The following four factors are used to determine if a use is fair:

• The purpose of the use (eg. commercial vs. educational)*
• The nature of the copyrighted work
• The amount of the material used (the greater the amount copied, the less likely it is fair use)
• The effect of use on the potential market for or value of the work

*Not all uses in an academic context are automatically considered fair use!

Can I Use It? Map:  guides users through the process of determining if a use is fair. Developed by The University of Minnesota Libraries.  https://www.lib.umn.edu/pdf/DecisionMap.pdf

Fair Use Evaluator: helps users collect, organize, and document the information they may need to support a fair use claim, and  provides a time-stamped PDF document for the users’ records. Developed by the American Library Association, Office for Information Technology Policy, Copyright Advisory Network. http://librarycopyright.net/resources/fairuse/

17 U.S.C. § 107

U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.). Circular 21: Reproduction of copyrighted works by educators and librarians. Retrieved from

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf