Questions?

Alison Moffat
Manager of Library Services
715.319.7336
Email Alison

Lori Weigel
Instructional Designer
715.788.7124
Email Lori

What is Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Office defines Fair Use as a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.

Fair use is focused around four factors:

• Purpose of use
  • Was the use of copyrighted material for commenting on it, news reporting, or non-profit uses such as teaching and education.
• Nature of the copyrighted work
  • Is the work being used creative such as a song or fictional story, or is it a factual work such as a technical manual. Factual items are more likely to be considered available under fair use.
• Amount or portion of the copyrighted work used
  • To use a copyrighted item under fair use, you should limit your use to only a portion of the work. A single article in publication, part of a chapter out of a full text book, or one image from an archive.
• Effect of the use upon the value of the copyrighted work
  • To use an item under fair use, your usage cannot affect the over-all value of the copyright work. Using an entire textbook would decrease the value as others would not need to purchase the book. Using part of a single chapter does not lower the over-all value of the text book.

As a non-profit educational institution, we are allowed to use portions of copyrighted work in a classroom setting (which includes online use within Blackboard). Considering the four factors listed above, if you have an item you are unsure if it would fall under Fair Use or not, please reach out to:

Alison Moffat
Manager of Library Services
Email Alison

For additional support, you can use the Fair Use Evaluator tool available through the American Library Association's Copyright Advisory Network