17 Fair Use in Education II
Coauthor credit: Isabel Soto-Luna, Business Librarian, University of Nebraska at Omaha Library
Many people have heard of fair use and have some ideas about what it is. Unfortunately, there are many myths or misunderstandings about exactly what fair use covers, what the law states or how it can be applied. Below we dispel just a few of the most common myths about fair use.
Myths About Fair Use
Myth 1: All educational use is fair use.
Fact: While there are specific exceptions that allow for making copies of copyrighted works to provide access to the blind or people with other disabilities, they are sometimes too narrow to provide complete access. In these cases, it is often possible to rely upon fair use to provide access to materials.
Myth 2: Every educational use is transformative.
Fact: Using copyrighted works for teaching can often be a transformative use, but not always. For example, using a textbook created to teach Biology 101 to teach Biology 101 is not transformative.
Myth 3: All socially beneficial use is fair use.
Fact: Fair use is designed to help balance the rights of the creator and the social benefit of using copyrighted works in certain ways. Not all uses of copyrighted works that would be socially beneficial, however, qualify as fair use. For example, scanning and posting an entire medical textbook online for anyone to access for free is socially beneficial but probably not fair use.
Myth 4: All commercial use precludes fair use.
Fact: Many commercial activities, such as newspapers and online news sites, rely heavily on fair use.
Myth 5: It is not possible to have fair use when a permissions scheme exists for a work.
Fact: Just because rights holders are willing to charge you for using their copyrighted material, does not mean that fair use cannot apply. For example, the Associated Press created a licensing scheme to quote from AP stories but quoting from news stories has long been considered fair use.
Myth 6: Fair use specifies a percentage or amount of work that is okay to use.
Fact: The law does not state that using 10% of a book or 30 seconds of a song or video clip is fair use. You can often use more than these arbitrary limits, while sometimes using even less might not be fair use. The amount of the original work used is only one of the four factors to consider.
Common Examples of Educational Fair Use
Students and teachers rely on fair use to accomplish many of their educational goals. Below are some, but by no means all, educational activities that rely upon fair use.
| Activity | Reliance on Fair Use |
|---|---|
| Student Projects | Includes both media and text.
Your fair use analysis will change depending on how the project is presented. For example: only the professor sees it, you share it with the whole class, you present it to a group outside the class, or you post it online for anyone to see. |
| Course Reserves | Includes electronic reserves.
Instructors may, in some situations, rely on fair use to copy or post small portions of books or journals for supplementary student readings. However, they cannot copy entire copyrighted works as a replacement for materials that students would normally be required to purchase. |
| Sound or Video Clips for Teaching | Students and teachers can make use of video or sound clips in creating multimedia presentations for use in the classroom. |
| Digitization Projects | Many university libraries rely on fair use to create large-scale digitization projects that preserve older materials, as well as providing improved access to their collections for the purpose of research. For an example of this type of digitization project, check out the HathiTrust. |
| Content in Scholarly Articles | It is common to quote other researchers’ writings or use others’ images, graphs, or charts in your own scholarly writing. These practices have long been considered acceptable under fair use. |
| Access for People with Disabilities | When specific exemptions don’t fit. While there are specific exceptions that allow for making copies of copyrighted works to provide access to the blind or people with other disabilities, they are sometimes too narrow to provide complete access. In these cases, it is possible to rely upon fair use to provide access to materials. |
Fair Use for Non-Educational Purposes
Fair use is not only available for educational purposes. Many other commercial and non-commercial activities depend upon fair use. Some of these common fair uses include:
- Quotes in books, news reports and blogs
- Mash-ups and remixes
- Parody, such as on television shows like South Park or Saturday Night Live
- Video or sound clips in documentary films
- Thumbnail images on search engines
This section makes use of material adapted from “Fair Use: An Overview,” by Portland Community College, CC BY 4.0, and “Common Examples of Fair Use,” The Ohio State University Libraries, CC-BY 4.0.
