Fair use

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For fair use on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Fair use.

For fair use in trademark law, see Fair use (US trademark law).

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. It is based on free speech rights provided by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The term "fair use" is unique to the United States; a similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.

United States trademark law also incorporates a "fair use" defense. While the names are the same, the doctrines are quite different.

1 Fair use under United States law
2 Practical effect of fair use defense
3 Fair use as a defense
4 Fair use and parody
5 Fair use on the Internet
6 Common misunderstandings
7 Influence
8 See also
9 References
10 External links and sources

[edit] Fair use under United States law

The legal concept of "copyright" was first ratified by the United Kingdom's Statute of Anne of 1709. As room was not made for the authorized reproduction of copyrighted content within this newly formulated statutory right, the courts gradually created a doctrine of "fair abridgment," which later became "fair use," that recognized the utility of such actions. The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107, reprinted here:

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

the nature of the copyrighted work;

the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.^[1]

The four factors of analysis for fair use set forth above derive from the classic opinion of Joseph Story in Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F.Cas. 342 (1841), in which the defendant had copied 353 pages from the plaintiff's 12-volume biography of George Washington in order to produce a separate two-volume work of his own. The court rejected the defendant's fair use defense with the following explanation:

[A] reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism. On the other hand, it is as clear, that if he thus cites the most important parts of the work, with a view, not to criticize, but to supersede the use of the original work, and substitute the review for it, such a use will be deemed in law a piracy....

In short, we must often... look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, or diminish the profits, or supersede the objects, of the original work.

Once these factors were codified as guidelines in USC § 107, they were not rendered exclusive. The section was intended by Congress to restate, but not replace, the prior judge-made law. Courts are still entitled to consider other factors as well.

Fair use tempers copyright's exclusive rights to serve the purpose of copyright law, which the U.S. Constitution defines as the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (I.1.8). Some commentators have also suggested that the First Amendment's protection of free speech necessitates some form of fair use defense, because some things simply cannot be said without some amount of copying^{[citation needed]}. This principle applies particularly well to the case of criticism and also sheds light on various other limitations on copyright's exclusive rights, particularly the scenes a faire doctrine.

[edit] Purpose and character

The first factor questions whether the use under consideration helps fulfill the intention of copyright law to stimulate creativity for the enrichment of the general public, or whether it aims to only "supersede the objects" of the original for reasons of, say, personal profit. To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new. A key consideration is the extent to which the use is interpreted as transformative, as opposed to merely derivative. When Tom Forsythe appropriated Barbie dolls for his photography project "Food Chain Barbie," Mattel lost its claims of copyright and trademark infringement against him because his work effectively parodies Barbie and the values she represents (cf. the 2003 9th Circuit case Mattel Inc. v. Walking Mountain Productions). However, when Jeff Koons tried to justify his appropriation of Art Rogers' photograph "Puppies" in his sculpture "String of Puppies" with the same parody defense, he lost because his work was not presented as a parody of Rogers' photograph in particular, but of society at large, which was deemed insufficiently justificatory.^[2] Thus, even if a secondary work proves transformative, it must be appropriately so

The subfactor mentioned in the legislation above, "whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes," has recently been deemphasized in some Circuits "since many, if not most, secondary uses seek at least some measure of commercial gain from their use."^[3] More important is whether the use fulfills any of the "preamble purposes" also mentioned in the legislation above, as these have been interpreted as paradigmatically "transformative." Although Judge Pierre Leval has distinguished the first factor as "the soul of fair use," it alone is not determinative. For example, not every educational usage is fair.^[4]

[edit] Nature of the copied work

Although the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the availability of copyright protection should not depend on the artistic quality or merit of the work at issue, fair use analyses nevertheless consider certain aspects of the copied work, such as whether it is fictional or non-fictional, to be germane. To prevent the private ownership of work that rightfully belongs in the public domain, facts and ideas are separate from copyright—only their particular expression or fixation merits such protection. On the other hand, the social usefulness of freely available information can weigh against the appropriateness of copyright for certain fixations. The Zapruder film of the assassination of President Kennedy, for example, was purchased and copyrighted by Time magazine. Yet their copyright was not upheld, in the name of the public interest, when they tried to enjoin the reproduction of stills from the film in a history book on the subject in Time Inc. v. Bernard Geis Associates.^[5]

Following the decisions of the Second Circuit in Salinger v. Random House, Inc.^[6] and in New Era Publications Int'l v. Henry Holt & Co.,^[7] whether the copied work has been previously published suddenly trumped all other considerations because of, in the words of one commentator, "the original author's interest in controlling the circumstances of the first public revelation of his work, and his right, if he so chooses, not to publish at all." Yet some view this importation of certain aspects of France's droit moral d'artiste (moral rights of the artist) into American copyright law as "bizarre and contradictory" because it sometimes grants greater protection to works that were created for private purposes that have little to do with the public goals of copyright law, than to those works that copyright was initially conceived to protect. This is not to claim that unpublished works, or, more specifically, works not intended for publication, do not deserve legal protection, but that any such protection should come from laws about privacy, rather than from laws about copyright. The statutory fair use provision was amended in response to these concerns by adding a final sentence: "The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."

[edit] Amount and substantiality

The third factor assesses the quantity or percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been imported into the new work. In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, e.g., a few sentences of a text for a book review, the more likely that the sample will be considered fair use. Yet see Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios for a case in which substantial copying—entire programs for private viewing—was upheld as fair use. Likewise, see Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation,where the Ninth Circuit held that copying an entire photo to use as a thumbnail in online search results did not weigh against fair use, "if the secondary user only copies as much as is necessary for his or her intended use." Conversely, in Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters,^[8] the use of less than 400 words from President Ford's memoir by a political opinion magazine was interpreted as infringement because those few words represented "the heart of the book" and were, as such, substantial.

Before 1991, sampling in certain genres of music was accepted practice and such copyright considerations as these were viewed as largely irrelevant. The infamously strict decision against rapper Biz Markie's appropriation of a Gilbert O'Sullivan song in the case Grand Upright v. Warner^[9] changed practices and opinions overnight. Samples now had to be licensed, as long as they rose "to a level of legally cognizable appropriation."^[10] In other words, de minimis sampling was still considered fair and free because, traditionally, "the law does not care about trifles." The recent Sixth Circuit Court decision in the appeal to Bridgeport Music has reversed this standing, eliminating the de minimis defense for samples of recorded music, but stating that the decision did not apply to fair use.

[edit] Effect upon work's value

The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work. The court not only investigates whether the defendant's specific use of the work has significantly harmed the copyright owner's market, but also whether such uses in general, if widespread, would harm the potential market of the original. The burden of proof here rests on the defendant for commercial uses, but on the copyright owner for noncommercial uses. See Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios,^[11] where the copyright owner, Universal, failed to provide any empirical evidence that the use of Betamax had either reduced their viewership or negatively impacted their business. In the aforementioned Nation case regarding President Ford's memoirs, the Supreme Court labeled this factor "the single most important element of fair use"^[12] and it has indeed enjoyed some level of primacy in fair use analyses ever since. Yet the Supreme Court's more recent announcement in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.^[13] that "all [four factors] are to be explored, and the results weighed together, in light of the purposes of copyright" has helped modulate this emphasis in interpretation.

In evaluating the fourth factor, courts often consider two kinds of harm to the potential market of the original work: First, courts consider whether the use in question acts as a direct market substitute for the original work. In the words of the Supreme Court in Acuff-Rose Music, "when a commercial use amounts to mere duplication of the entirety of the original, it clearly supersedes the object of the original and serves as a market replacement for it, making it likely that cognizable market harm to the original will occur." In one instance, a court ruled that this factor weighed against a defendant who had made unauthorized movie trailers for video retailers, since his trailers acted as direct substitutes for the copyright owner's official trailers.^[14] On the other hand, one might well question whether Roland Barthes' S/Z clearly supersedes Honoré de Balzac's short story "Sarrasine" as a market replacement, since it reproduces the entirety of the latter, though only in short fragments followed by much critical explication by Barthes. Second, courts also consider whether potential market harm might exist beyond that of direct substitution, such as in the potential existence of a licensing market. This consideration has weighed against commercial copy shops that make copies of articles in course-packs for college students, when a market already existed for the licensing of course-pack copies.^[15]

Courts recognize that certain kinds of market harm do not oppose fair use, such as when a parody or negative review impairs the market of the original work. Copyright considerations may not shield a work against adverse criticism.

[edit] Practical effect of fair use defense

The practical effect of this law and the court decisions following it is that it is usually possible to quote from a copyrighted work in order to criticize or comment upon it, teach students about it, and possibly for other uses. Certain well-established uses cause few problems. A teacher who prints a few copies of a poem to illustrate a technique will have no problem on all four of the above factors (except possibly on amount and substantiality), but some cases are not so clear. All the factors are considered and balanced in each case: a book reviewer who quotes a paragraph as an example of the author's style will probably fall under fair use even though he may sell his review commercially. But a non-profit educational website that reproduces whole articles from technical magazines will probably be found to infringe if the publisher can demonstrate that the website affects the market for the magazine, even though the website itself is non-commercial.

Free Republic, LLC, owner of the political website freerepublic.com, was found liable for copyright infringement in L.A. Times v. Free Republic for reproducing and archiving full-text versions of plaintiffs' news articles even though the judge found the website minimally commercial. She held that "while defendants' do not necessarily 'exploit' the articles for commercial gain, their posting to the Free Republic site allows defendants and other visitors to avoid paying the 'customary price' charged for the works."

The April 2000 opinion ruled concerning the four factors of fair use that 1) "defendants' use of plaintiffs' articles is minimally, if at all, transformative," 2) the factual content of the articles copied "weighs in favor of finding of fair use of the news articles by defendants in this case," though it didn't "provide strong support" 3) concerning the amount and substantiality prong, "the wholesale copying of plaintiffs' articles weighs against the finding of fair use," and 4) the plaintiffs showed that they were trying to exploit the market for viewing their articles online and defendants didn't rebut their showing by proving an absence of usurpation harm to plaintiffs. Ultimately the court found "that the defendants may not assert a fair use defense to plaintiffs' copyright infringement claim."

[edit] Fair use as a defense

The Supreme Court of the United States described fair use as an affirmative defense in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc..^[16] This means that, in litigation on copyright infringement, the defendant bears the burden of raising and proving that his use was "fair" and not an infringement. Thus, fair use need not even be raised as a defense unless the plaintiff first shows (or the defendant concedes) a "prima facie" case of copyright infringement. If the work was not copyrightable, the term had expired, or the defendant's work borrowed only a small amount, for instance, then the plaintiff cannot make out a prima facie case of infringement, and the defendant need not even raise the fair use defense.

Because of the defendant's burden of proof, some copyright owners frequently make claims of infringement even in circumstances where the fair use defense would likely succeed in hopes that the user will refrain from the use rather than spending resources in his defense. This type of frivolous lawsuit is part of a much larger problem in First Amendment law; see Strategic lawsuit against public participation.

Because paying a royalty fee may be much less expensive than having a potential copyright suit threaten the publication of a completed work in which a publisher has invested significant resources, many authors may seek a license even for uses that copyright law ostensibly permits without liability.

The frequent argument over whether fair use is a "right" or a "defense" [2] is generated by confusion over the use of the term "affirmative defense." An affirmative defense is simply a term of art from litigation reflecting the timing in which the defense is raised. It does not distinguish between "rights" and "defenses," and so it does not characterize the substance of the defendant's actions as "not a right but a defense." The First Amendment, for instance, is generally raised as an affirmative defense in litigation, but is clearly a "right." Similarly, while fair use is characterized as a defense in terms of the litigation posture, Section 107 defines fair use as a "limitation" on copyright law and states clearly that "the fair use of a copyrighted work ... is not an infringement of copyright."

[edit] Fair use and parody

Producers or creators of parodies of a copyrighted work have been sued for infringement by the targets of their ridicule, even though such use may be protected as fair use. The fair use cases addressing parodies distinguish between parodies—using a work in order to poke fun at or comment on the work itself—and satires—using a work to poke fun at or comment on something else. Courts have been more willing to grant fair use protections to parodies than to satires, but the ultimate outcome in either circumstance will turn on the application of the four fair use factors.

In Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.^[17] the Supreme Court recognized parody as a fair use, even when done for profit. Roy Orbison's publisher, Acuff-Rose Music Inc., had sued 2 Live Crew in 1989 for their use of Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" in a mocking rap version with altered lyrics. The Supreme Court viewed 2 Live Crew's version as a ridiculing commentary on the earlier work, and ruled that when the parody was itself the product rather than used for mere advertising, commercial sale did not bar the defense. The Campbell court also distinguished parodies from satire, which they described as a broader social critique not intrinsically tied to ridicule of a specific work, and so not deserving of the same use exceptions as parody because the satirist's ideas are capable of expression without the use of the other particular work.

In a more recent parody case, Suntrust v. Houghton Mifflin, a suit was brought unsuccessfully against the publication of The Wind Done Gone, which reused many of the characters and situations from Gone with the Wind, but told the events from the point of view of the slaves rather than the slaveholders. The Eleventh Circuit, applying Campbell, recognized that The Wind Done Gone was a protected parody, and vacated the district court's injunction against its publication.

[edit] Fair use on the Internet

A US court case in 2003, Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, provides and develops the relationship between thumbnails, inline linking and fair use. In the lower District Court case on a motion for summary judgment, Arriba Soft was found to have violated copyright without a fair use defense in the use of thumbnail pictures and inline linking from Kelly's website in Arriba's image search engine. That decision was appealed and contested by Internet rights activists such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who argued that it is clearly covered under fair use.

On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the defendant. In reaching its decision, the court utilized the above-mentioned four-factor analysis. First, it found the purpose of creating the thumbnail images as previews to be sufficiently transformative, noting that they were not meant to be viewed at high resolution like the original artwork was. Second, the fact that the photographs had already been published diminished the significance of their nature as creative works. Third, although normally making a "full" replication of a copyrighted work may appear to violate copyright, here it was found to be reasonable and necessary in light of the intended use. Lastly, the court found that the market for the original photographs would not be substantially diminished by the creation of the thumbnails. To the contrary, the thumbnail searches could increase exposure of the originals. In looking at all these factors as a whole, the court found that the thumbnails were fair use and remanded the case to the lower court for trial after issuing a revised opinion on July 7, 2003. The remaining issues were resolved with a default judgment after Arriba Soft had experienced significant financial problems and failed to reach a negotiated settlement.

[edit] Common misunderstandings

Because of the deliberate ambiguity of fair use, it is commonly misunderstood. Here are some of the more common misunderstandings with explanations of why they are wrong:

Any use that seems fair is fair use. In the law, the term "fair use" has a specific meaning that only partly overlaps the plain-English meaning of the words. While judges have much leeway in deciding how to apply fair use guidelines, not every use that is commonly considered "fair" counts as fair use under the law.
Fair use interpretations, once made, are static forever. Fair use is decided on a case by case basis, on the entirety of circumstances. The same act done by different means or for a different purpose can gain or lose fair use status. Even repeating an identical act at a different point in time can make a difference due to changing social, technological, or other surrounding circumstances.
If it's not fair use, it's copyright infringement. Fair use is only one of many limitations, exceptions, and defenses to copyright infringement. For instance, the Audio Home Recording Act establishes that it is legal in some circumstances to make copies of audio recordings for noncommercial personal use.
It's copyrighted, so it can't be fair use. Fair use describes conditions under which copyrighted material may be used without permission. If a work is not copyrighted, it's in the public domain and fair use does not come into play, since public-domain works can legally be used for any purpose.
Acknowledgment of the source makes a use fair. Giving the name of the photographer or author may help, but it is not sufficient on its own. While plagiarism and copyright violation are related matters—both can, at times, involve failure to properly credit sources—they are not identical. Copyright law protects exact expression, not ideas: for example, a distant paraphrase that lays out the same argument as a copyrighted essay is in little danger of being deemed a copyright violation, but it could still be plagiarism. On the other hand, one can plagiarize even a work that is not protected by copyright, such as trying to pass off a line from Shakespeare as your own. Plagiarism—using someone's words, ideas images, etc. without acknowledgment—is a matter of professional ethics. Copyright is a matter of law. Citing sources generally prevents accusations of plagiarism, but is not a sufficient defense against copyright violations (otherwise, anyone could legally reprint an entire copyrighted book just by citing who wrote it).
Noncommercial use is invariably fair. Not true, though a judge may take the profit motive or lack thereof into account.
Strict adherence to fair use protects you from being sued. Fair use is a defense against an infringement suit; it does not restrain anyone from suing. The copyright holder may legitimately disagree that a given use is fair, and they have the right to have the matter decided by a court. This means that fair use is not really a deterrent to SLAPP.
The lack of a copyright notice means the work is public domain. Not usually true. United States law in effect since March 1, 1989 has made copyright the default for newly created works. For a recent work to be in the public domain the author must specifically opt-out of copyright. For works produced between January 1, 1923 and March 1, 1989, copyright notice is required; however, registration was not required^[18] and between January 1, 1978 and March 1, 1989 lack of notice is not necessarily determinative, if attempts were made immediately to correct the lack of notice. Any American works that did not have formal registration or notice fell into the Public Domain if registration was not made in a timely fashion. For international works, the situation is even more complex. International authors who failed to provide copyright notice or register with the U.S. copyright office are given additional contemporary remedies that may restore American copyright protection given certain conditions. International authors/corporations who fail to meet these remedies forfeit their copyright. An example of a company who failed to prove copyright was Roland Corporation and their claimed copyright on the sounds contained in their MT-32 synthesizer.
It's okay to quote up to 300 words. The 300-word limit is reported to be an unofficial agreement, now long obsolete, among permissions editors in the New York publishing houses: 'I'll let you copy 300 words from our books if you let us copy 300 words from yours.' It runs counter to the substantiality standard. As explained above, the substantiality of the copying is more important than the actual amount. For instance, copying a complete short poem is more substantial than copying a random paragraph of a novel; copying an 8.5×11-inch photo is more substantial than copying a square foot of an 8×10-foot painting. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a news article's quotation of approximately 300 words from former President Gerald Ford's 200,000 word memoir was sufficient to constitute an infringement of the exclusive publication right in the work.^[19]
You can deny fair use by including a disclaimer. Fair use is a right granted to the public on all copyrighted work. Fair use rights take precedence over the author's interest. Thus the copyright holder cannot use a non-binding disclaimer, or notification, to revoke the right of fair use on works.^[20] However, binding agreements such as contracts or license agreements may take precedence over fair use rights.^[21]
If you're copying an entire work, it's not fair use. While copying an entire work may make it harder to justify the amount and substantiality test, it doesn't make it impossible. For instance, in the Betamax case, it was ruled that copying a complete television show for time-shifting purposes is fair use.
If you're selling for profit, it's not fair use. While commercial copying for profit work may make it harder to qualify as fair use, it doesn't make it impossible. For instance, in the 2 Live Crew—Oh, Pretty Woman case, it was ruled that commercial parody can be fair use.

[edit] Influence

The US fair use doctrine has influenced the development of such exemptions in other jurisdictions^{[citation needed]}. For instance, Philippine copyright law has a fair use doctrine based largely, or even exactly, on the doctrine adopted in the United States.