Fair Use Policy

"Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work." There are four different headings that act as guidelines for this fair usage policy: purpose and character, name of the copied work, amount and substantiality & effect upon work's value.

The first factor refers to whether the use of the material is intended to enrich the general public or whether it is for personal profit (in which case the policy is enforced).  For example "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."

The second factor is concerend with who the copyright should be owned by, in this case it protects companies from claiming private rights to material that should belong to the general public. "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"

The third factor assesses the quantity/percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been placed into the new work. "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"."

The fourth factor measures the effect that the infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit their original work. "See Sony Corp v Universal City Studios,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."

 

All quotes and information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use