Lesson 8 - Copyright 7:

Some Copies are OK Because
they are "Fair Uses"

There's one other rule that lets many people lawfully copy others' work: The fair use doctrine.

The fair use doctrine asks several questions:

Is your use noncommercial?
Is your use for purposes of criticism, comment, parody, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research?
Is the original work mostly fact (as opposed to mostly fiction or opinion)?
Has the original work been published (as opposed to sent out only to one or a few people)?
Are you copying only a small part of the original work?
Are you copying only a relatively insignificant part of the original work (as opposed to the most important part)?
Are you adding a lot new to the work (as opposed to just quoting parts of the original)?
Does your conduct leave unaffected any profits that the copyright owner can make (as opposed to displacing some potential sales OR potential licenses of reprint rights)?

The more YES answers there are to the above questions, the more likely it is that your use is legal. The more NO answers there are, the more likely it is that your use is illegal.

The trouble is that you can't just count the answers. Sometimes even a few YESes will lead to a finding of fair use; sometimes even a few NOes will lead to a finding of no fair use. Often even the sharpest lawyers won't be able to predict the result.

In the next few messages, though, we'll try to give some rules of thumb - which we hasten to say are our own interpretations of the law, with which others might disagree - about what's allowed and what's not.

authors:

Larry Lessig David Post Eugene Volokh

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Lesson 8 - Copyright 7:

Some Copies are OK Because they are "Fair Uses"

Some Copies are OK Because
they are "Fair Uses"