A Student's Guide to Plagiarism, Copyright, and Fair Use: Fair Use

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research [emphasis added]. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.

• 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
• The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
• The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

• You cannot reproduce the entirety of a work.
• You cannot download music for free, someone has to be paying the artist.
• You cannot sell your work, if it has major portions of another work copied in it.
• You cannot copy enough of the work so that it would negatively impact the sale of the original.
• You cannot rip and upload a movie to the internet, or copy for a friend.
• You can make comments on parts of works in your academic work or in a student newspaper.
• You can quote portions of a work in your paper, but your instructor probably wants it in your words to check for comprehension.

AND, in every instance, you must cite your source.