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Copyright Rules & Resources: Fair Use

This guide will teach you all about copyright so you can manage your resources and write papers successfully.

What is fair use?

A portion of copyrighted material can be used without permission under a law called fair use. However, you still have to be careful as this does involve certain restrictions. Also keep in mind that if anyone ever questions your usage of their material, you will have to prove that you followed the rules of fair use.

Make sure you understand what fair use entails before getting started.

How to determine fair use

Fair use is determined using the following criteria: 

  • Purpose and character of use
    • Educational/nonprofit? YES 
    • Commercial/for profit? NO
  • Nature of copyrighted work
    • Factual? YES
    • Creative (novel, music, etc.)? NO
  • Amount used
    • Small amount, not the heart of the work? YES
    • Large amount? NO
  • Market effect
    • No/little effect on profit made by copyright owners? YES
    • Takes away from money made by copyright owners? NO

 

Course Reserves

Course Reserves are a great resource for students to use for free, as long as they remember the rules of fair use. Teachers can put a copy of the textbooks used in their classes in Course Reserves at the library. Students can check out textbooks from Course Reserves for a maximum of three hours at a time. This material is still under copyright, so any copying or sharing should be done under the rules of fair use. You are allowed to scan/copy pages for your own use, however this can only be up to 10% of the book or one chapter.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License