A Fair Analysis of Fair Use

(photo by by digitaloxygen.ca)

Yet another interesting article in the latest issue of Innovate on an online tool to evaluate Fair Use in copyright law: Fair Use Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Comparative Study of Students' Use of an Interactive Tool to Guide Decision Making.  Greenhow, Walker, Donnelly and Cohen (2008) evaluated a Fair Use Analysis (FUA) tool developed by the University of Minnesota Libraries  intended to scaffold working educators who wanted make a good decision as to whether they were within Fair Use guidelines.

The results of the study on using the tool were not very promising.  Quotes include: This study reinforced for us how difficult it is to teach copyright and fair use rules. Even after completing these exercises, many participants still seemed profoundly confused; and This study suggests that the reasoning process involved in coming to a responsible fair use decision is not easily grasped by most graduate teaching assistants and instructional support staff.

Nevertheless, I think this tool maybe helpful for me in helping me help others try to make good fair use decisions.  I am frequently in the position of helping clients think through thier own usage of copyright materials.  Often people shy away from admitting they are using copywrite materials even if that use is within "fair use". This tool seems like a good starting point for focusing the conversation.  

This is a hard problem. If anyone has a magic bullet please let me know! 

10:48 PM, 17 Dec 2007 by Caroline Meeks Permalink

10 Rules of Thumb on Fair Use for Bloggers

At the Group News Blog we don't have a magic bullet, but as someone who is constantly quoting other bloggers, we have some rules of thumb.

1. Check the copyright notice. They may have given blanket permission for usage, for example, if they use a license which grants virtually unlimited permission.

2. Otherwise, we try VERY hard not to quote more than four (4) paragraphs. Don't always make it. But we work damn hard at it.

3. In general, don't write articles which consist of taking a LOT of someone else's copyrighted material and you saying, "I agree."

4. ALWAYS credit photos. If you can't, get another photo. I'm working very hard to get my colleagues to follow this one.

5. Don't simply rewrite someone else's article. If you don't have something to say, don't speak.

6. Don't rewrite someone else's article but follow their format. That's still a copyright violation. Worse, it's plagiarism.

7. Give credit profusely. Always Hat Tip another blog if they tipped you off to a topic.

8. If you simply feel you MUST grab a lot of material from another blogger, write them a note even after the fact, acknowledging you did so and offering to reedit. Ninety-nine out of 100 times you'll get a note back saying it's fine. But this way, you've covered your ass AND you're being polite. It simply isn't right to take another's work beyond a certain point without their permission.

9. Never take all of anything, no matter what, unless you have explicit permission or the copyright notice allows you to do so.

10. What goes around, comes around. Treat others with regard to copyright the way you want to be treated yourself.

And as a bonus suggestion:

The Creative Commons license gives other people the right to remix your work in ways you might not have wanted it used, without compensation, keep your name on it, and then use it for example depending on which version of the CC license you select, in an advertising campaign for something you are violently opposed to.

We STRONGLY suggest if you think you might EVER use any of your materials in a book, even an accademic book, that you NOT use a Creative Commons license. Instead simply put a standard copyright notice on your materials and trust people to use Fair Use appropriately, and to make requests for usage, which you may then grant or deny as you see fit.

Here is the notice we use at Group News Blog (which we'll update to 2007-2007 come the turn of the year):

Copyright © 2007 GNB Media.

Brief fair-use excerpts for blogging, reviews, or class-room use are welcome.

by Jesse Wendel on 12/18/07