What is fair use?
What is fair use?
Fair use is an exception to the rights of copyright holders that allows users to copy small parts of copyrighted works under certain circumstances without seeking permission or paying royalties. Fair use is probably the most important exception for educational settings, allowing many uses of copyrighted works for the purposes of teaching and research.
To evaluate resources to see if they qualify for fair use, Messiah University teaching faculty should use Messiah University's Fair Use Evaluation Tool and keep the documentation the evaluation tool produces. Such documentation is important, providing evidence that you considered relevant issues in your evaluation.
The chart below summarizes fair use factors. Remember, fair use is a guideline, not a rule. When in doubt, obtain permission to avoid any potential legal challenges brought by copyright holders. If you have questions, contact your liaison librarian!
For this factor... |
It is more likely to be fair use if... |
It is less likely to be fair use if... |
Purpose |
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Nature |
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Amount |
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Market |
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Additional resources for fair use
- Take a deeper dive with the University of Southern Indiana's Fair Use & Copyright Decision Tree
- What is Transformative Use? A resource from NOLO, one of the web's largest libraries of free, consumer-friendly legal information.
- Messiah University's Fair Use Evaluation Tool will help you weigh the four factors of fair use and provide a record for you to keep to show that you considered relevant issues.