Copyright and Fair Use: Fair Use

What is Fair Use?

Fair Use provisions of the copyright law allow use of copyrighted materials on a limited basis for specific purposes without the permission of the copyright holder. 

Four factor test for fair use:

• For what purpose would the work be used?
• What is the nature is of the work to be used?
• How much of the work would be used?
• What effect on the market for that work would the use have?

If Fair Use does not apply:

• You can usually pay a fee to the rights holder in order to use material.
• For reuse of a portion of a book or article, an efficient place to begin is the Copyright Clearance Center, a commercial service.
• For reuse of content from formats other than a book or article (e.g.music or film) consult the Scholarly Communication Librarian or 'Further Reading' for a sample permission letter.

Fair use is an ambiguous concept and the law does not state exactly what uses of a copyrighted work will be considered fair uses under the law and may therefore be used without obtaining permission. As such, individuals who are not lawyers may often need to be interpreters of the law in everyday circumstances, and answers as to how much reproduction may be considered fair use often remain unclear. The bottom line is that fair use requires a very circumstance-specific analysis as to whether a particular use or reuse of a work may indeed be considered fair use.

To avoid confusion and minimize the risk of copyright infringement, Lindenwood University interprets the following situations as fair use:

• Quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work for illustration or clarification of the author's observations.
• Reproduction of material for classroom use where the reproduction is unexpected and spontaneous – for example, where an article in the morning's paper is directly relevant to that day's class topic. This would generally cover one time use in only one semester.
• Use in a parody of short portions of the work itself.
• A summary of an address or article, which may include quotations of short passages of the copyright-protected work.

If your use does not meet the above criteria and the work is protected by copyright, you probably need to obtain permission to use the work from the copyright holder or its agent.