The Fair Use Doctrine

Copyrighted materials are sometimes assigned from journals or news sources without having the students purchase the original. Is this a violation of copyright law?

There is a doctrine of “fair use” of material, described in this publication from the US Copyright Office. As they note, there are four factors used to determine fair use exceptions:

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

They also note that the lines are difficult to draw.

Here is an attempt to draw those lines from the University of Texas system. They include, for example, these rules of thumb for course packets:

1. Limit coursepack materials to

· single chapters

· single articles from a journal issue

· several charts, graphs or illustrations

· other similarly small parts of a work.

2. Include

· any copyright notice on the original

· appropriate citations and attributions to the source.

3. Obtain permission for materials that will be used repeatedly by the same instructor for the same class.

Another useful discussion of the fair use doctrine is provided by the IUPUI Copyright Management Center. And, of course, there is a site on Wikipedia.