A few weeks ago I reminded readers that The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a free legal guide for bloggers. Today, the American University's Center for Social Media released its code of six best practices (pdf) for fair use of online video.
Along with what they are calling the most common situations that are bound to arise, they include a description, principle and the limitations of each. They also mention up front that in most fair use cases judges are trying to answer two questions:
1. Did the unlicensed use “transform” the material taken from the copyrighted work by using it for a different purpose than that of the original, or did it just repeat the work for the same intent and value as the original?
2. Was the material taken appropriate in kind and amount, considering the nature of the copyrighted work and of the use?
If the answer to both is yes, then fair use is a likely judgement.
Also, the paper reminds us that good faith efforts, such as credit and attribution are also taken into consideration.
AU's Six Best Practices for Fair Use of Video
- Commenting on or critiquing of copyrighted material
- Using copyrighted material for illustration or example
- Capturing copyrighted material incidentally or accidentally reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize,
- Preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon
- Copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion
- Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements
