Faculty Guide: Open Educational Resources (OER): Fair Use Guidelines

Legal scholars, lawyers, politicians, copyright owners and other stakeholder fail to agree on the meaning and scope of fair use. Only a court can make the final determination on an specific use.

Fair Use:

Fair Use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is fair use and identifies certain types of uses such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research as examples of activities that may qualify for fair use. 

In determining if use of any work may be considered fair use consider the following actors:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

On the U.S. Copyright Office Fail Use Index page, additional information is provided and a link labeled Search Index intended to facilitate access to the code of Copyright Laws.