LibGuides @ URI: Fair Use and Copyright for Online Education: Additional Resources

Codes of best practices in fair use and similar resources

The Center for Media & Social Impact at American University has worked with various groups of content creators to help them document practices in their communities that are widely considered to be fair use. Courts take into account the common practices of a given community when deciding fair use cases. Each Code includes principles describing how and why fair use applies to a given practice or situation as well as limitations that should be observed to strengthen the case for fair use.

Key articles on fair use

Pierre Laval, "Toward a Fair Use Standard," Harvard Law Review (1990)
In this seminal article on fair use, Leval argues that the transformativeness of a work is the most critical element of the fair use analysis.
Neil Netanel, "Making Sense of Fair Use," Lewis & Clark Law Review (2011)
Netanel surveys fair use cases decided between 1978 and 2011 and concludes that "the key question" is whether the use is transformative, and, if so, whether the amount taken is appropriate to the transformative purpose.

Fair use checklists

Fair use checklists help you focus on the facts of a given situation in order to to better evaluate how fair use might apply. They also assist you in recording your decision-making process and serve as proof of your good-faith effort to apply fair use if your use is challenged by a rightsholder.

Fair Use Checklist
From the Copyright Advisory Office at Columbia University.
Fair Use Evaluator
Tool that helps you describe how your intended use relates to each of the four fair use factors and how fair you feel your use is for each factor. Provides you with a time-stamped PDF document for your records.