Copyright

Fair Use is addressed in 17 U.S. Code § 107. The official language is as follows:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—

A few points of expansion on the text given in copyright law...

Purpose and character of the use

• Is it for non-profit and/or educational purpose?
• The expanded version of copyright/fair use points to "transformative" uses. This means "those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work."¹ In education's case, an example might be using the material to illustrate or expand upon a theme that is discussed in class.

Nature of the copyrighted work

• Non-fiction is more likely to be fair use than fiction.
• Published work is more likely to be fair use than unpublished work.

Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole

• This is a very ambiguous criteria, as the word "amount" is not given a definite percentage or number of words. Is it a chapter of a larger book or the entire book itself? The chapter would be more likely to fall under fair use.
• Does the amount you use constitute the heart of the material? For example, are you uploading all of the most meaningful scenes in a movie?

Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work

• Does the amount used affect the market for the item? For example, uploading the text of a book when it would otherwise be purchased by the student for a reasonable cost likely would not fall under fair use.
• Would the material you used cause any harm if it made it, in whole, out of Blackboard.

1. U.S. Copyright Office, "More Information on Fair Use," last modified March 2019, https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

In order to help you determine if your use qualifies as Fair Use, please use the following checklist courtesy of Columbia University Libraries.

     The Checklist is licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution License with attribution to the original creators of the checklist Kenneth D.Crews (formerly of Columbia University) and Dwayne K. Buttler (University of Louisville). Retrieved from https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/fair-use/fair-use-checklist.html