Remix Culture: Fair Use is Your Friend
A video that explains why the Code for Fair Use in Online Video got created, and how the Code can help you create online videos that employ fair use of copyrighted material.
Created by the Center for Social Media email: socialmedia@american.edu
Guidelines for Best Practices from American University (not legally binding)
"Created by the International Communication Association. Helps U.S. communication scholars to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use."
"A code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use."
"A code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law."
"A code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. "
Fair Use is an exemption to the rights of copyright holders.
The Four Factors
"Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair. See the checklist below to see how to apply these factors.
the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work; (fiction/creative or nonfiction/factual)
amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
from the U.S. Copyright Office http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
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Is Fair Use a law? Yes, Fair Use is codified in Title 17, Section 107 of the U.S. Code.
No, fair use applies to everyone, nonprofit and commercial users alike. There are, however, certain privileges for educational uses.
No.
You can use small portions of a copyrighted work to comment and illustrate a point, report news, do research or scholarship, criticism or parody.
There are no amounts or percentages in the law. If you have heard of percentages, those most likely come from guidelines developed over the years by groups like CONFU, but these percentages are not written into the law. When using copyrighted work, use the least amount necessary. Although the law does not specify any amounts, copyright scholars seem comfortable with approximately 10% of a work. If however you have chosen the "heart of the work," a much smaller amount might fail the fair use test. The "heart of the work" of a book might be the pages with the key turning point of a story or the revealing motivation for a person's action. For a song, it might be the 4 second refrain that is recognized worldwide, across generations. You may have more leeway with amount when you are creating a parody.
Think of this along with your first fair use factor. The nature of the use may be commercial or nonprofit, and nonprofit uses are always considered more favorably. If what you do with the copyrighted work adds new meaning, brings new value, or repurposes a work, you have transformed it beyond its original use. The problem with transformative work is that you may think a use is transformative, but the judge may not. It is not always predictable. Stanford University has some examples to illustrate successful and unsuccessful transformative work.
For class handouts in a face to face classroom, see the tab marked "Classroom Guidelines." For the use of performance and display in classrooms using digital transmissions (Blackboard, Moodle, etc), see the tab for TEACH Act.
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