What is "Fair Use" in the Context of Copyrighted Material?

In order to explain “fair use” the idea of intellectual property should be explained. Intellectual property is a product such as a book, music, movie, or invention that is generated by the creativity of an individual and has commercial value. Copyright provides the creator or author with rights concerning their work and the ability to give others the same rights. The author or owner has the right to reproduce, distribute, display copies in public, perform the work in public, and produce new works derived from copyrighted work.

However, in the context of fair use, it is sometimes legal for others to reproduce copyrighted work without permission. The Copyright Act lists four factors that need to be considered in order to determine if the material is considered “fair use.” Four questions that should be considered to help define if the material is in the realm of fair use are: the purpose and character of use, the nature of the work being copied, how much of the work is being used, and how will the use affect the market value for the copyrighted work?

Our book provided two scenarios to help you understand the process of determining if the conditions were in favor of fair use. I am very familiar with the first example because when I attended college for my bachelor’s degree, I had to get my English materials from Kinko’s. I would pay for entire articles to be copied, but never wondered if it was a violation of copyright since Kinko’s was a well-known and established chain of stores. When you exam the four questions in this example, three of the four factors weigh in favor of fair use, so it would appear that the professor’s actions were within the realm of fair use when reproducing copyrighted journal articles.

Deciding if something is fair use is still very subjective, thus making it hard to enforce the rules and consequences of reproducing copyrighted material. To make it even more difficult, images and text are easy to snip and copy from the Internet. Teachers and students aren’t aware or considering if they are reproducing someone’s intellectual work without permission because it is so readily available to them, and they aren’t using for profit. However, there are more factors to consider.

References

 

Quinn, Michael J. Ethics for the Information Age. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2011. Print.