Service Alert
Fair use provisions of the copyright law allow for limited copying or distribution of published works without the author's permission in some cases. Examples of fair use of copyrighted materials include quotation of excerpts in a review or critique, or copying of a small part of a work by a teacher or student to illustrate a lesson.
There are no explicit, predefined, legal specifications of how much and when one can copy, but there are guidelines for fair use. Each case of copying must be evaluated according to four factors:
For more information on the Fair Use Factors please visit Copyright for Teaching Faculty, Johns Hopkins University.
If you're in doubt to whether you can use material or not, check with Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) to see if there is a pay-per-use or annual license available for the material you would like to include in your teaching.
Copyright for Teaching Faculty, Johns Hopkins University.
Not sure if your use is Fair Use? Check out Thinking Through Fair Use from the University of Minnesota. Input information about the purpose, nature, amount, and market effect of your use and this tool will display when the use of a copyrighted work might be fair and when it's not.
