What You Must Know About Fair Use

There are certain uses of copyrighted material that are legal. The uses of these exceptions are known as fair use. Reproduction of copyrighted material is legal if it is for the purpose of criticism, comment, education, research, scholarship, or news reporting.

Teaching allows for multiple copies to be made for classroom use. However, these are not automatically considered fair use. There are certain guidelines that must be met for a use to be considered fair under copyright law:

A use must not be for commercial gain. Educational usage must be not for profit. The nature of the copyrighted work comes into play. An author that intends to write an educational English practice book intends on profiting on school and students purchasing the copyrighted material.

While some may view a teacher making copies of this practice book as fair use, it directly impedes an author from profiting off their targeted demographic. It is only considered fair use if a small sample of each chapter is used so everyone is not benefiting off illegal copies for free of the entire practice book.

The amount of copyrighted material used must also fit guidelines. Once again, an entire book cannot be copied for each student to use. Also, a book critic may not publish an entire book in a newspaper or a movie critic may not play an entire movie on their review show. This directly takes profit away from a creator. Fair use copyright may not have an ill effect on the market value of a piece of original work.

An unpublished work is held to the same fair use copyright laws as published works. If the unpublished work is placed on a tangible medium, ownership is claimed and it may not be used beyond the restrictions set in place by fair use copyright laws.

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