Fair Use Fundamentals

Fair use is a user’s right that helps libraries and their users ensure that rights persist in the digital environment. Libraries may rely on fair use as well as other rights to facilitate their core functions. Learn more about the special rights that libraries enjoy to promote the progress of science and the useful arts using the Know Your Copyrights resource.

 

 

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Toolkit

Here are some resources to help you celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week on your campus:

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Brand Guide and Logos

The Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week logos or word marks should not be used to imply or suggest endorsement of any product or service not approved by the coordinators of Fair Use Week. Please follow the specifications provided in the Fair Use Brand Guide (PDF) when implementing the Fair Use Week logo or word mark.

Official image files of the Fair Use Week logo and Fair Dealing Week logo are available for download below.

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Two Questions on Fair Use: Interview with Nabiha Syed

For this year’s Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, MediaWell is partnering with the Association of Research Libraries to interview experts reflecting on how fair use supports research, journalism, and truth. This is the fourth and final installment of MediaWell’s four-part series, entitled “Two Questions on Fair Use.” In this interview, we ask Nabiha Syed, president of The Markup, about how the problem of misinformation requires discretion from people looking to exercise fair use, and how fair use supports people who share information independently.

Read the interview on MediaWell’s website.

Can fair use help combat misinformation on social media?

One of the things I love about fair use is that it creates this carve out from a copyright infrastructure that otherwise could pose a lot of downstream restrictions for a creator or a commentator or a person engaging in a critique. That’s the reason why Justice Ginsburg said that fair use doctrine was a built-in free speech safeguard. We want to engage with cultural conversation, with topics of great public interest, and we want to be able to point to them and say, “I’m not sure I agree with that,” or “there’s a detail that’s missing here, or “let me tell you about how my research really supports this in a way that might be counterintuitive.”

What’s tricky about misinformation is that while you can say, “Let me take snippets of the misinformation and rebut it or debunk it, or fact check it,” fair use permits you to do that. But there’s an open question about whether the psychological research actually supports that as a good thing to do.

Fair use clears the way for us to be able to say, “Okay, here is a rumor that’s spreading about how JFK Jr. is going to come back and turn Donald Trump into the president,” which I think was circulating a couple months ago. We can take that snippet because fair use allows us to, and have that clip or take that quote and comment on it, which is all well and good and should happen. But in a journalistic environment, do we want to be recirculating it? Do we want to be amplifying it? These are a really interesting set of questions. I’m not sure it’s the right tactic, but I’m glad that fair use at least gives us the chance to engage.

For researchers who are working on a different time horizon than journalists, the ability to really dig in, to create a historical record of this kind of misinformation, to document how it flows, that wouldn’t be possible without fair use. For that use case, I think it’s tremendously necessary to document this strange time that we’re in, and the many flavors of misinformation. But for the news journalistic context that I operate in, I worry a little bit about just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

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Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Day 3 Roundup

This year, libraries, universities, and civil society groups celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week February 21–25.

Fair use (in the US) and fair dealing (in Canada and other jurisdictions) is a right that allows the use of copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder under certain circumstances. Association of Research Libraries (ARL) President K. Matthew Dames, the Edward H. Arnold University Librarian for the University of Notre Dame, says of fair use: “Fair use is an indispensable tool allowing librarians, researchers, journalists, and the public to access and use copyrighted original sources, which is critical to understanding the truth of any issue. Along with rights that Congress specifically granted to libraries, fair use propels the advancement of culture and knowledge, which is the fundamental purpose of copyright.”

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Fair Use Jurisprudence Project—Updated for 2022

**Cross-posted from https://ipat.law.uci.edu/fairuse22/**

By

Pie chart of fair use opinions by court name and state.

Fair Use Opinions by Court, January 1, 2019–February 8, 2022

Last year, in celebration of Fair Use Week, the IPAT clinic took a deep dive into fair use. We looked at every written judicial opinion that discussed fair use from the beginning of 2019 through February 2021, and made them available in a searchable, sortable database with abstracts and commentary and links to copies of every single case. We learned a lot, and the resources we made available were used by many scholars, students, and attorneys across the country.

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Two Questions on Fair Use: Interview with Alex Abdo

For this year’s Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, MediaWell is partnering with the Association of Research Libraries to interview experts reflecting on how fair use supports research, journalism, and truth. This is the third of MediaWell’s four-part series, entitled “Two Questions on Fair Use” in which we ask Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about the key issues surrounding researchers’ and journalists’ access to data, as well as legislative efforts to promote platform transparency for researchers. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Read the interview on MediaWell’s website.

What would you think are the key issues for scholars and journalists to know right now about access to data?

One of the most important subjects of research at the moment is our online world, and researchers and journalists are trying to educate the public about what our new online sphere portends for society. Is public discourse online being manipulated or distorted by the platforms that host and curate conversations online, or by malicious third parties who try to hijack conversations or hijack the machinery of content moderation to advance their agenda at the expense of the public interest?

But it is extremely difficult to study those questions because you need data to study them, and the platforms, for their part, tend to be pretty stingy in the data they make available to researchers and journalists. And so there are many, many journalists and researchers now who try to study the platforms independently, by acquiring data through their own means, either by recruiting volunteers to their studies to enable research, or by collecting data directly themselves for their studies.

The problem is that the platforms tend to view those kinds of activities as violations of their terms of service; they tend to view them as illegal. And the platforms, and I’m mainly thinking of Facebook here, have threatened researchers and journalists who engage in these public interest investigations with cease-and-desist letters, threats of litigation, with the effect of shutting down some of these individual research projects or causing them to change in ways that make them less useful to the public.

Maybe even more troubling is the fact that these threats cast a broader chill on the research community. There are many researchers who don’t take up these sorts of investigations because they don’t want to have to worry about a corporate behemoth like Facebook sending them a legal threat and a legal demand that they don’t have the resources or the institutional backing to fight. So that, to my mind, is one of the most important areas where we need research and study, but where corporate terms of use have created an enormous blind spot for humanity.

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Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Day 2 Roundup

This year, libraries, universities, and civil society groups celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week February 21–25.

Fair use (in the US) and fair dealing (in Canada and other jurisdictions) is a right that allows the use of copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder under certain circumstances. Association of Research Libraries (ARL) President K. Matthew Dames, the Edward H. Arnold University Librarian for the University of Notre Dame, says of fair use: “Fair use is an indispensable tool allowing librarians, researchers, journalists, and the public to access and use copyrighted original sources, which is critical to understanding the truth of any issue. Along with rights that Congress specifically granted to libraries, fair use propels the advancement of culture and knowledge, which is the fundamental purpose of copyright.”

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Two Questions on Fair Use: Interview with Rebekah Tromble

For this year’s Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, MediaWell is partnering with the Association of Research Libraries to interview experts reflecting on how fair use supports research, journalism, and truth. This is the second of MediaWell’s four-part series, entitled “Two Questions on Fair Use” in which we ask Rebekah Tromble—director of the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics and associate professor in the School of Media & Public Affairs at George Washington University—about how fair use enables computational social science research, but also how limitations on fair use imposed by social media platforms constrain research and teaching about political discourse online.

Read the interview on MediaWell’s website.

How does the copyright environment affect what kind of research & scholarship is conducted, and why does this matter for society? For democracy?

I think that I can share from my perspective, as someone who studies political information and political discourse in the digital space, meaning everything from blogs, to websites, to of course social media, but also mass media that’s produced online and shared online. The rules and regulations around copyright, in many instances, wind up making the kind of core scientific endeavor quite challenging, particularly because under the best practices of the scientific method, you would ideally share the core data, the baseline data, so that others can deeply investigate the work that you’ve done and ensure that you’ve followed the proper methodology and replicate it as appropriate.

In the area that I work in, computational social science, we’re doing a lot of things like building out algorithmic models to detect and understand various concepts or various phenomena. Having that underlying data available is essential. It’s really, really important. And so we’re sometimes hindered by the fact that, for example, if I’m using a great deal of data pulled from mass media outlets, news organizations, websites, I very often can’t share that with other researchers. Those who are on my team can also work with that data, but copyright rules and regulations prevent us from sharing it with other researchers outside of our team, and so the scientific process winds up being hindered. The sort of questions that we’re investigating are about the spread and impact of disinformation. Understanding the types of political discourse that are happening in a variety of spaces online is really essential to our deeper understanding of both the health and wellness, and on the other hand, the harms that are occurring within our democratic societies.

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Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week Day 1 Roundup

This year, libraries, universities, and civil society groups celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week February 21–25.

Fair use (in the US) and fair dealing (in Canada and other jurisdictions) is a right that allows the use of copyrighted materials without permission from the copyright holder under certain circumstances. Association of Research Libraries (ARL) President K. Matthew Dames, the Edward H. Arnold University Librarian for the University of Notre Dame, says of fair use: “Fair use is an indispensable tool allowing librarians, researchers, journalists, and the public to access and use copyrighted original sources, which is critical to understanding the truth of any issue. Along with rights that Congress specifically granted to libraries, fair use propels the advancement of culture and knowledge, which is the fundamental purpose of copyright.”

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Interview with Jonathan Band

For fair use week 2022, ARL teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #Mediawell project and asked experts to weigh in on how fair use supports research, news, and truth. In this video, ARL General Counsel Jonathan Band describes how fair use allows researchers and journalists to quote and reference the materials that libraries collect and preserve.

Jonathan Band on fair use and the ecosystem of journalism, research, and libraries

Rina Pantalony on Fair Use and Research Outputs

For fair use week 2022, ARL teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #Mediawell project and asked experts to weigh in on how fair use supports research, news, and truth. In these videos, Rina Pantalony, Director, Copyright Advisory Services, Columbia University Libraries, shares her expertise on fair use, research outputs, and libraries’ role in promoting algorithmic literacy.

Libraries and Algorithmic Literacy

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Pat Aufderheide on Fair Use and Journalism, Documentary Filmmaking, and Visual Arts

For fair use week 2022, ARL teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #Mediawell project and asked experts to weigh in on how fair use supports research, news, and truth. In these videos, Pat Aufderheide, University Professor, School of Communication, American University, shares her expertise on fair use and journalism, documentary filmmaking, and visual arts. To read the Codes of Best Practices in Fair Use that Pat references, please visit https://cmsimpact.org/report-list/codes/. You can see all of the interviews at fairuseweek.org.

Fair Use and Journalism

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Sandra Enimil headshot.

Relying on Fair Use to Reach Intended Audiences

By Sandra Enimil

For Fair Use Week 2022, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #MediaWell project and asked experts to weigh in on how fair use supports research, news, and truth. Sandra Enimil, copyright librarian and contracting specialist at Yale University Library and chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Research and Scholarly Environment Committee, shares below how fair use helps information reach intended audiences. 

Note: This post was transcribed from a conversation and lightly edited.

When you look at the actual statute about fair use, Section 107 of the Copyright Act, it calls out news reporting by name. It states that it would not be an infringement of copyright to reuse some content in the course of news reporting—it’s specifically called out. So, I think that our legislative branch recognized that people who are in the business of reporting need to be able to use content, sometimes in ways that it was intended to be used, and sometimes in ways that it was not intended to be used, in order to tell stories. Reporters need to be able to tell stories in a way that provides information, in a way that might meet their audience where they are, or have an impact, or be accessible to an audience.

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Sandra Enimil headshot.

Fair Use and the Scholarly Environment

By Sandra Enimil

For Fair Use Week 2022, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #MediaWell project and asked experts to weigh in on how fair use supports research, news, and truth. Sandra Enimil, copyright librarian and contracting specialist at Yale University Library and chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Research and Scholarly Environment Committee, explains below how the copyright environment affects research and scholarship, and why this matters for society. 

Note: This post was transcribed from a conversation and lightly edited.

I am the chair of ACRL’s Research and Scholarly Environment Committee, and one of the things that we work on is talking about scholarship in academic institutions and how people make scholarship available and open access. In this landscape, I think one of the things that people recognize as important is author copyright. With faculty authors, at most institutions, the institution doesn’t claim copyright in their scholarly works, so the author keeps copyright.

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Two Questions on Fair Use: Interview with Mark Lemley

For this year’s Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, MediaWell is partnering with the Association of Research Libraries to interview experts reflecting on how fair use supports research, journalism, and truth. This is the first of MediaWell’s four-part series, entitled “Two Questions on Fair Use” in which we ask Mark Lemley, William Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, some questions about the legal history of fair use, and how fair use supports research and teaching. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Read the interview on MediaWell’s website.

How does fair use support journalism, specifically documentary filmmaking, data-driven reporting, news content, and aggregation?

I think the answer is fair use has sort of long been integral to all kinds of journalism and reporting. You can go back decades; you can go back almost a century to some remarkable cases. For example, there was a case in which somebody who wanted to tell the story of the Kennedy assassination broke in and got copies of stills from the Zapruder film, which was the only visual evidence of the Kennedy assassination. When the copyright owner sued, the court said, “that’s fair use because you’re taking a copyrighted work for purposes related to the public interest.” I think that has been true across a wide array of news and media communications. There are often circumstances in which there is one key source: somebody took a video of a beating or a shooting, for example, or the key source is itself an official document.

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Fair Use Supports Research, Journalism, and Truth

By Katherine Klosek

For #FairUseWeek 2022, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) teamed up with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) #MediaWell project to ask experts to reflect on how fair use supports research and journalism, and how fair use can help combat misinformation, for example on social media. 

The interviews reveal how libraries play a critical role in the ecosystem of research, journalism, and truth by collecting and preserving source material, and making information available for researchers and journalists to cite facts, and quote original sources. Journalists rely on fair use everyday; fair use preserves the constitutionality of copyright by allowing journalists to express their First Amendment rights. Fair use also enables the reproducibility of science by allowing peers to access, interrogate, and build on research outputs like data, methodology, and findings that may be protected by copyright.

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How Fair Use Helps Bloggers Publish Their Research

By Eric Goldman

Bloggers play an increasingly important role in the research ecosystem, especially as investigative journalism has declined. Bloggers often pay attention to issues that are too niche-y or esoteric for mainstream media coverage, and bloggers can provide expert commentary and repositories of source materials on fast-moving topics.

Publishing these materials can create substantial legal risk for research-focused bloggers, including the risk of copyright infringement. Unfortunately, many bloggers do not have the same financial resources, access to lawyers, or insurance coverage as institutional publishers, so they are less likely to defend their works in the face of allegations of copyright infringement.

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Libraries, Universities, and Civil Society Groups to Celebrate Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2022 on February 21–25

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photo of Fair Use Week t-shirt

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021 Reminds Us That Fair Use Is a Right

Last week more than 50 universities, associations, and organizations celebrated the eighth annual Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, a celebration of these critical copyright doctrines that foster scholarship and creativity. Fair use in the US and fair dealing in Canada allow the public to lawfully use copyrighted materials without asking for permission. Described by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a built-in accommodation to the First Amendment, fair use provides a balance of rights between creators and users that is critical to the constitutional purpose of copyright: to promote the progress of science and useful arts. We celebrated each day of Fair Use Week with virtual activities, new resources, and insights and expertise to empower libraries, teachers, educators, and the public about the right of fair use. Three new projects launched during Fair Use Week, which we are excited to showcase here.

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Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021 Day 5 Roundup

Last week was Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. The week is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines.

Check out all the great posts from the final day—Day 5—of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021! Don’t see yours? Email kaylyn@arl.org to get it added! You can view previous roundups here.

Blog Posts/News

Creation Is Not a Closed Book Exam: Developing the Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources,” Will Cross and Meredith Jacob, Copyright at Harvard Library blog

Fair Dealing Week 2021: Beyond Fair Dealing,” Lachlan MacLeod, Dalhousie University Libraries’ The Libvine blog

Fair Use Week 2021: A Case from South Florida,” Kristy Padron, Florida Atlantic University Libraries

Events

Applying Fair Use in the Classroom,” hosted by University of Arkansas University Libraries

Copyright for Internet Creators Town Hall,” hosted by Electronic Frontier Foundation

Fair Use Week Office Hours,” hosted by University of Houston Libraries

Resources

Copyright Toolkit,” University of Nebraska Kearney Calvin T. Ryan Library

Debunking the Fair Use vs. Fair Dealing Myth: Have We Had Fair Use All Along?,” Ariel Katz, The Cambridge Handbook of Copyright Limitations and Exceptions

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021 Day 4 Roundup

This week is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. The week is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines.

Check out all the great posts from Day 4 of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021! Don’t see yours? Email kaylyn@arl.org to get it added! You can view previous roundups here.

Blog Posts/News

Fair Dealing Week 2021: Fair Dealing and Students,” Lachlan MacLeod, Dalhousie University Libraries’ The Libvine blog

Fair Use in the Real World,” Mariah Lewis and Laura Childs, Fordham Library News blog

Fair Use Week 2021,” Donna Stewart, Cleveland State University Michael Schwartz Library

Rebekah Modrak on Teaching Studio Art with Fair Use,” Center for Media and Social Impact Blog

Events

Fair Use Week Gameshow,” University of Illinois Library

Implementing the CARL Copyright OER for University Instructors and Staff on Campus,” webinar hosted by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries

Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021

By Jack Lerner, Luke Hartman, and Jordin Wilcher

Cross-posted at https://ipat.law.uci.edu/fairuse2021

We are excited to celebrate Fair Use Week with a new report from the UC Irvine Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology (IPAT) Clinic: Fair Use Jurisprudence 2019–2021: A Comprehensive Review. The report presents the results of an exhaustive study of recent fair use opinions issued by US federal courts in copyright infringement cases.

Copyright covers a huge range of expressive activity and is automatic. Just about anyone who wants to do more than read, watch, or use a work relies on the doctrine of fair use in order to avoid liability for copyright infringement. The US Supreme Court has referred to fair use as a sort of safety valve that provides breathing space allowing copyright to coexist with freedom of expression. And it is an evolving doctrine; disputes concerning fair use are constantly working their way through the American legal system, but the vast majority of cases don’t make the news despite their importance to creative expression and innovation.

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MET orchestra performing online during COVID-19 pandemic

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Promotes Creativity

We started the week sharing the ways that we’re all fair users now, and as #fairuseweek nears its end, we now look to the future. ARL’s Action Plan prioritizes digital rights, which to us means working toward barrier-free access to information. Barriers to internet access can be physical or economic, such as lacking broadband at home when schools and libraries are closed. Bad public policy can be another barrier, and that’s why this year, we are focused on protecting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

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Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021 Day 3 Roundup

This week is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. The week is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines.

Check out all the great posts from Day 3 of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021! Don’t see yours? Email kaylyn@arl.org to get it added! You can view previous roundups here.

Blog Posts/News

A Sample of Fair Use,” Sandra Aya Enimil, Copyright at Harvard Library blog

ACRL Books Celebrating Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week,” Erin Nevius, ACRL Insider

Fair Dealing Week 2021,” Kirsten Thompson, Teaching in a Fishbowl blog

Fair Dealing Week 2021: Faculty and Fair Dealing,” Lachlan MacLeod, Dalhousie University Libraries’ The Libvine blog

Fair Use and Dr. Seuss,” Christine E. Weller, Penn Libraries

Open Educational Resources Makers Get a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use,” Center for Media and Social Impact Blog

Quiz: How Much Do You Know about the Fair Use Doctrine?,” University of Colorado Boulder University Libraries

The Heart of Copyright Policy: Fair Dealing, an Indian Perspective,” Akshat Agrawal, Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week website

Virtual Escape Room—Fair Dealing Week Edition,” University of New Brunswick Libraries

You Be the Fair Use Judge Today: Visual Arts,” Center for Media and Social Impact Blog

Events

Copyright 101,” a free live course presented by Columbia University Libraries and LYRASIS in their new pilot Virtual Copyright Education Center

Fair Use in the Time of COVID-19,” webinar hosted by UCLA library

Foundations of OER,” first of three Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) webcasts on open educational resources scheduled through mid-March

Next Steps for Fair Dealing Advocacy,” panel discussion with Brenda Austin-Smith, Eli MacLaren, and Mark McCutcheon, hosted by University of Alberta

The Basics of Copyright,” workshop providing an a overview of copyright legislation, fair use, and licensing, hosted by University of Arkansas University Libraries

Resources

Fair Use,” Bentley University Library Research Guides

Future Thinking: ASERL’s Resource Guide to Controlled Digital Lending for Research Libraries,” Association of Southeastern Research Libraries

A Sample of Fair Use

By Sandra Aya Enimil

Music sampling has been, and is, a critical fixture and feature of hip-hop. Hip-hop is an amalgamation of music, music mixing, dance, graphic art, and a specific clothing aesthetic. Lovers of hip-hop music and copyright have followed and studied the impact of copyright law on the genre, particularly how hip-hop musical artists (MCs) have engaged fair use.

Read the full blog: http://blogs.harvard.edu/copyrightosc/2021/02/24/fair-use-week-2021-day-three-with-guest-expert-sandra-aya-enimil/

photo of person looking through binoculars between two stacks of books

Online Copyright Education Offered by Columbia University Libraries and LYRASIS

In early February, Columbia University Libraries and LYRASIS launched the Virtual Copyright Education Center (VCEC) pilot project. With a stellar faculty drawn from experts in research libraries and museums, “the project will introduce new classes to enable cultural heritage professionals to move beyond a basic understanding of copyright. The project also includes business planning to develop a sustainable service model to enable continued training.”

Even with noticeable growth in the number of scholarly communications positions within the ARL community in the past decade, such positions—advising on issues like open access and copyright—are still less than 2 percent of the professional workforce within ARL. This project will help scale and level up highly specialized knowledge of copyright across research libraries. Librarians work with students and faculty to better understand copyright exemptions like the fair use doctrine that enable their research, teaching, and learning. Librarians will also help prepare campus communities for understanding challenges that might come through the new Copyright Claims Board via the CASE Act.

ARL welcomes this new educational initiative, with its first course, Copyright 101, launching for free during Fair Use Week 2021.

Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021 Day 2 Roundup

This week is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week, an annual celebration of the important doctrines of fair use and fair dealing. The week is designed to highlight and promote the opportunities presented by fair use and fair dealing, celebrate successful stories, and explain these doctrines.

Check out all the great posts from Day 2 of Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week 2021! Don’t see yours? Email kaylyn@arl.org to get it added! You can view previous roundups here.

Blog Posts/News

Apple v. Corellium: Some Early Takeaways for Software Fair Use,” Brandon Butler, Copyright at Harvard Library blog

Copyright Is Complicated, Your Library Can Help,” Red River College Library

Do Communication Scholars Need Fair Use?,” Aram Sinnreich, Center for Media and Social Impact Blog

Fair Dealing Week 2021: Fair Dealing–Myths and Facts,” Lachlan MacLeod, Dalhousie University Libraries’ The Libvine blog

Fair Dealing Week 2021: What Is Fair Dealing?,” Lachlan MacLeod, Dalhousie University Libraries’ The Libvine blog

Fair Use Best Practices for Open Education Resources Endorsed by ARL,” Cynthia Hudson-Vitale, ARL Views blog

“ ‘Fair Use’ Is Your Best Friend!,” Michael Ladisch, UC Davis Library

Fair Use Week 2021: Resource Roundup,” Authors Alliance

Imagine,” Meera Nair, Fair Duty blog

Events

All about Fair Use,” webinar with Christine Fruin on the fair use statute and how case law from the last 30 years has both confused and clarified its application for libraries, hosted by Atla

Copyright and Fair Dealing: Lessons Learned in COVID-19 Quarantine,” presentation by Carys J. Craig, hosted by University of Alberta

Fair Dealing and Education:  Access Copyright v. York University,” presentation by Pascale Chapdelaine, hosted by University of Alberta

Fair Dealing Week: Copyright and Education, 2021 Update,” panel discussion with Julia Shin Doi, Carol Shepstone, and Ann Ludbrook, hosted by Ryerson University Library

Fair Use in Higher Education: A Conversation with Kyle Courtney,” lecture cosponsored by Longwood University Intellectual Property Committee and Greenwood Library

Fair Use: Using Copyrighted Materials in Research and Teaching,” virtual workshop offered by NYU Libraries’ Scholarly Communications & Information Policy Department

Join Copyright Services for Fair Use Week 2021,” drop-in consultation with Ohio State University Libraries’ Copyright Services

Resources

Copyright and Fair Use: Start Here,” Boise State University Albertsons Library

Copyright Resources to Support Publishing and Teaching: Fair Use,” Penn Libraries

Copyright: The Law and Guidelines: Fair Use,” University at Albany, SUNY, University Libraries

Dalhousie Fair Dealing Guidelines,” Dalhousie University Libraries

Fair Dealing Decision Tool,” Copyright Consortium of the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada

Fair Dealing Flowchart,” University of Waterloo

Fair Dealing Tool,” Red River College Library

Fair Use Week 2021 Resource Roundup,” Authors Alliance

Videos

Fair Dealing Week 2021,” 2:40-minute video, University of Waterloo Library

The Heart of Copyright Policy: Fair Dealing, an Indian Perspective

By Akshat Agrawal, Legal Researcher, Delhi High Court

“Knowledge must be allowed to be disseminated” stated the Indian Supreme Court, in Entertainment Network (India) Ltd. and Ors. v. Super Cassettes. Harping upon the idea of Anglo-Saxan Copyright, justified by the tenets of utilitarianism, the SC clearly emphasized upon the need to balance exclusivity-based incentives as against concerns of access, especially when concerned with knowledge resources. This was nothing new. Long back, prior to the partition of India, when the Imperial Copyright Act of 1914 was in force, during and due to the shackles of colonialism, the Lahore High Court (erstwhile India) harped upon the coloniality of the copyright doctrine, realizing the needs of the Indian citizens to be able to develop indigenous knowledge through access, more than anything else. The Lahore High Court, in 1934, in the judgment of Kartar Singh v. Ladha Singh, very convincingly determined the limits of incentives and the utilitarian purposes of the free market statutory intervention that is copyright, by stating that “Under the guise of Copyright, a Plaintiff cannot ask the court to close all the avenues of research and scholarship, and all frontiers of human knowledge.” What a remarkable decision!

Akshat Agrawal
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