Today, most work is protected under various Commercial Commons licenses, which means that the author decides how little or how much of his or her work may or may not be used. For example, some work may be used provided there is attribution of some kind. Other work may be used if there is attribution and you are further allowed to alter the work in some kind. Other work may be available for free but with no attribution but in almost all cases, credit is due to the author and the copyright for the original work remains with the author and must be noted as such. You may, depending on the license, use the work in your own piece, but you must give credit where credit is due; depending on how much of the work you have used, you can say the work is collaborative or with 'excerpts from' or 'based on' or any number of ways of phrasing, but you must give the copyright symbol and the author or artist’s (define this broadly) name with the copyright symbol.
Illustrations and images are more complicated. In brief, you cannot use an entire work under the guidelines, or an illustration may be used in its entirety but no more than five images may be reproduced for educational purposes. You may use no more than 10% or fifteen images, whichever is less and they may be used as part of an educational work.
It’s understandable that one would simply give up at this point and say why bother, since copyright law is so complicated and fair use may seem truly unfair. According to one source, penalties for breaking fair use laws are serious and harsh. According to the law at Cornell:
...the court can award up to $150,000 for each separate act of willful infringement. Willful infringement means that you knew you were infringing and you did it anyway. Ignorance of the law, though, is no excuse. If you don't know that you are infringing, you still will be liable for damages - only the amount of the award will be affected. Then there are attorneys' fees.. There is one special provision of the law that allows a court to refuse to award any damages at all if it so chooses, even if the copying at issue was not a fair use. It is called the good faith fair use defense [17 USC 504(c)(2)]. It only applies if the person who copied material reasonably believed that what he or she did was a fair use - as would likely be the case if you followed this Policy! If you qualify for this defense, it makes you a very poor prospect for a lawsuit. On the other hand, if you disregard sound advice about fair use, a court would be free to award the highest level of damages available. This makes someone who ignores policies a handsome target for a lawsuit.
Article comments
1 - Mary K. Williams
Sadi-
Thanks for laying this out. I'm working with some others on an anthology of some of our work, and this question just came up this week.
I worked in a tech library for five years - you'd think I'd know something about this - as the general subject of copyright came up all the time. But I'm still pretty ignorant of it all.
This will be another good reference to store away.
2 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
hi Mary:
i'm really glad this will help and be a reference of sorts... that's super. use it as you see fit; it's a good simple guide. i have another on copyright if you're interested, but the fair use piece is better i think and more pertinent to the moment.
best of luck with your anthology,
sadi
3 - Nukapai
You might want to edit this while you still can; spotted a few little mishaps in there (for example: dinner's should be dinners). :)
Otherwise, GREAT resource, thank you for the work in pulling this together! I will probably return to check it in the future!
4 - uao
Nice article; I learned a lot from it. Nice reseach, too.
Fair use has always been a fuzzy concept to me; nice to see some rough guidelines compiled, even if the law remains fairly fuzzy.
One of the most useful articles I've seen in a while.
5 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
hey all:
i'm grateful for the pointing out the typos, though going through the whole thing again seems daunting but i'll do it because it should be perfect, so when i have some time tomorrow.
i'm glad this is such a great resource as several of you have said.... i hope it helps. these are not my opinions, but the guidelines layed out by the government etc and i think before you can say anything meaningful, you need to know the law as it is...
so i hope this helps, and it sounds like it is.
i'm really glad of that.
rock on.
sade.
6 - Al Barger
Miss Sadi, this is an exceptionally good and useful piece of writing. Thank you.
7 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
why Mr. Barger ~ long time no talk; do you have my new email address? if not, ask EO for it...would love to hear from you. Glad you like this...
cheers to you,
s.
8 - Eric Berlin
This story has been chose as a Blogcritics Editor's Pick for the week, congrats!
You've honored yourself up the right to select your favorite story over the next week for the new column, which will be published on Wednesdays or thereabouts. In any event, please feel free to nominate your fave piece under this week's column. The time frame will always run between Wednesday (today in this week's case) and next Tuesday night.
Thanks and congrats again ~ EB
9 - sadi ranson-polizzotti
EB ~ wow, and thanks. What an honor. So, choose a piece between this last Wednesday and next Tuesday evening in the Opinion piece column. That shouldn't be too difficult. I'll shoot you and EO an email once i've decided. Thanks again and i'm glad - really glad - that you all like this piece.
Cheers and i'll do my best on choosing a great piece for Best of....
Cheers and as ever, best.
Sade