How Do You Define Fair Use?

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Fair use is an important exception to copyright law and an affirmative defense in copyright infringement litigation. It allows consumers of copyrighted materials to use those materials in ways that would otherwise constitute infringement. Because of fair use, consumers are allowed to record television programs to watch later without first receiving permission from the copyright owner. Without fair use, playing a clip of a classic song—even if done for the purpose of commentary or parody—would be illegal.

Although the Copyright Act of 1976 defines broadly the meaning of fair use, a long line of court rulings have clarified the nature of fair use. As user-driven media portals such as YouTube have taken off in the past few years, competing interpretations of fair use have arisen in several high-profile lawsuits. Now that anybody can easily create a video and post it online, copyright owners devote significant resources to identifying infringing content in order to file takedown notices. Debates over fair use, no longer relegated to courtrooms and legal briefings, now matter to a wide range of Internet users. Bloggers need to know how much of a copyrighted article can be excerpted without triggering litigation, and amateur video producers must be aware of the circumstances in which they can show clips from copyrighted programs.