This document provides an overview of copyright law, including what is and is not protected, how to identify infringement, exceptions under fair use, and resources in the public domain such as works with expired copyrights and those released under Creative Commons licenses. It discusses the concept of fair use and how the four factors are analyzed in determining whether an unauthorized use is considered fair. An example case analysis is also included to illustrate a fair use determination. The different types of Creative Commons licenses are briefly outlined as well.
Emory Open Education Initiative 2014 - Copyright and the Creative CommonsMelanieKowalski
A brief overview of Copyright Law and the Creative Commons for creating Open Educational Resources (OERs) conducted as part of the 2014 Immersion Training for the Emory Open Education Initiative.
Emory Open Education Initiative 2014 - Copyright and the Creative CommonsMelanieKowalski
A brief overview of Copyright Law and the Creative Commons for creating Open Educational Resources (OERs) conducted as part of the 2014 Immersion Training for the Emory Open Education Initiative.
These are slides from the copyright session of the Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining (Building LLTDM) Institute. Hosted by the University of California, Berkeley Library's Office of Scholarly Communication Services.
2017 Special Libraries Association Conference Presentation by Christopher Kenneally - Copyright Clearance Center for "Fair Use in the Digital Age" conference session.
This workshop provides you with practical guidance for navigating copyright questions and other legal considerations for your dissertation or thesis.
It was presented online to UC Berkeley on October 25, 2021.
A presentation from UC Berkeley Library Office of Scholarly Communication Services for the Art + Feminism + Race + Justice Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon. The event took place at Moffitt Library on March 4, 2020.
Wikipedia is a complex environment. The servers are in the United States, which does not include a "rule of the shorter term" making some works inadmissible even though they are in the public domain in India. There are any number of quirks in this largely perhaps outdated law.
This webinar on intellectual property rights is the kick off session for a 6 week MOOC entitled Copyright – DIY led by Mathy Vanbuel from ATiT. During this first 1 hour long session entitled “From the Statute of Anne to Beyoncé” Mathy will provide an introduction as to where our current practices in IPR come from, what the different intellectual property rights are and how they affect all of us one way or the other whether we like it or not. This session and the rest of the MOOC is intended to be a practical introduction for anyone (teacher, writer, artist, student, consumer...) who creates original materials or who uses, reuses, mixes and adapts original materials that were created by others.
I created this slide deck to give as a handout to attendees of the Southern Christian Writers Conference where I was asked to speak on the topic: "The Writer & the Law."
Video clips of the session are now available here: http://benfranklinfollies.com/2012/06/19/video-of-the-writer-the-law-session-at-scwc/
A summary of copyright issues in social media sites and the relationship between amount of copyright support and the type and nature of each social media site.
June 18, 2014 Copyright and Digital Scholarship Session for the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship's HBCU Summer Institute for Digital Scholarship - https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/hbcuinstitute/
These are slides from the copyright session of the Building Legal Literacies for Text Data Mining (Building LLTDM) Institute. Hosted by the University of California, Berkeley Library's Office of Scholarly Communication Services.
2017 Special Libraries Association Conference Presentation by Christopher Kenneally - Copyright Clearance Center for "Fair Use in the Digital Age" conference session.
This workshop provides you with practical guidance for navigating copyright questions and other legal considerations for your dissertation or thesis.
It was presented online to UC Berkeley on October 25, 2021.
A presentation from UC Berkeley Library Office of Scholarly Communication Services for the Art + Feminism + Race + Justice Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon. The event took place at Moffitt Library on March 4, 2020.
Wikipedia is a complex environment. The servers are in the United States, which does not include a "rule of the shorter term" making some works inadmissible even though they are in the public domain in India. There are any number of quirks in this largely perhaps outdated law.
This webinar on intellectual property rights is the kick off session for a 6 week MOOC entitled Copyright – DIY led by Mathy Vanbuel from ATiT. During this first 1 hour long session entitled “From the Statute of Anne to Beyoncé” Mathy will provide an introduction as to where our current practices in IPR come from, what the different intellectual property rights are and how they affect all of us one way or the other whether we like it or not. This session and the rest of the MOOC is intended to be a practical introduction for anyone (teacher, writer, artist, student, consumer...) who creates original materials or who uses, reuses, mixes and adapts original materials that were created by others.
I created this slide deck to give as a handout to attendees of the Southern Christian Writers Conference where I was asked to speak on the topic: "The Writer & the Law."
Video clips of the session are now available here: http://benfranklinfollies.com/2012/06/19/video-of-the-writer-the-law-session-at-scwc/
A summary of copyright issues in social media sites and the relationship between amount of copyright support and the type and nature of each social media site.
June 18, 2014 Copyright and Digital Scholarship Session for the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship's HBCU Summer Institute for Digital Scholarship - https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/hbcuinstitute/
Open publication and creative commons licenses for academics (ITB PlanoCosmo ...Dasapta Erwin Irawan
This slide first appeared in my blog post http://dasaptaerwin.net/wp/2018/04/open-publication-and-creative-commons-license-for-academics-itb-planocosmo-2018.html .
From the beginning of the writing process to submitting and publishing your dissertation or thesis, we will walk you through a useful workflow for addressing copyright and other legal considerations.
11.06.17 Webinar for Society of California Archivists: Copyright workflows wo...Rachael Samberg
Webinar for Society of California Archivists re: copyright workflows for work with visual resources, such as photographs, paintings, images, and associated metadata.
Presentation for 2013 Research Resources Forum at Northwestern University Library. Welcoming event for incoming PhD students in humanities and social sciences.
Copyright, Publishing and Open Access: What You Need To Know SMangrum
COPYRIGHT, PUBLISHING AND OPEN ACCESS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TUESDAY, OCT. 21, 3:30 P.M. – Cook Library, room 123
Presenters: Sarah Mangrum, Circulation Librarian, University Libraries and Elizabeth La Beaud, Digital Lab Manager, University Libraries
This presentation will address everything you need to know about the relationship between copyright and open access, author’s rights, how to navigate creative commons licenses and publisher contracts and when to seek permission for using copyrighted works in research.
Similar to Copyright: Knowing, Applying Copyright Law (20)
A review of copyright, trademark and privacy laws that affect religion communication by M. Cayce Myers, Ph.D., J.D., APR at the 2018 Religion Communicators Council convention.
With agency budgets tightening, helping to fund your work as a communicator is becoming a career survival technique. This workshop will look at where nonprofit resources come from and how to keep them coming to you.
Facilitator Bud Heckman discussed data, trends and techniques for fundraising. Communications and development efforts must be closely aligned, he says. And communications must be seen as an integral part of the agency’s mission, not just a dispensable tool serving it.
Slides from workshop at RCC 2016
How to Obtain Permanent Residency in the NetherlandsBridgeWest.eu
You can rely on our assistance if you are ready to apply for permanent residency. Find out more at: https://immigration-netherlands.com/obtain-a-permanent-residence-permit-in-the-netherlands/.
Responsibilities of the office bearers while registering multi-state cooperat...Finlaw Consultancy Pvt Ltd
Introduction-
The process of register multi-state cooperative society in India is governed by the Multi-State Co-operative Societies Act, 2002. This process requires the office bearers to undertake several crucial responsibilities to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks. The key office bearers typically include the President, Secretary, and Treasurer, along with other elected members of the managing committee. Their responsibilities encompass administrative, legal, and financial duties essential for the successful registration and operation of the society.
In 2020, the Ministry of Home Affairs established a committee led by Prof. (Dr.) Ranbir Singh, former Vice Chancellor of National Law University (NLU), Delhi. This committee was tasked with reviewing the three codes of criminal law. The primary objective of the committee was to propose comprehensive reforms to the country’s criminal laws in a manner that is both principled and effective.
The committee’s focus was on ensuring the safety and security of individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. Throughout its deliberations, the committee aimed to uphold constitutional values such as justice, dignity, and the intrinsic value of each individual. Their goal was to recommend amendments to the criminal laws that align with these values and priorities.
Subsequently, in February, the committee successfully submitted its recommendations regarding amendments to the criminal law. These recommendations are intended to serve as a foundation for enhancing the current legal framework, promoting safety and security, and upholding the constitutional principles of justice, dignity, and the inherent worth of every individual.
PRECEDENT AS A SOURCE OF LAW (SAIF JAVED).pptxOmGod1
Precedent, or stare decisis, is a cornerstone of common law systems where past judicial decisions guide future cases, ensuring consistency and predictability in the legal system. Binding precedents from higher courts must be followed by lower courts, while persuasive precedents may influence but are not obligatory. This principle promotes fairness and efficiency, allowing for the evolution of the law as higher courts can overrule outdated decisions. Despite criticisms of rigidity and complexity, precedent ensures similar cases are treated alike, balancing stability with flexibility in judicial decision-making.
Car Accident Injury Do I Have a Case....Knowyourright
Every year, thousands of Minnesotans are injured in car accidents. These injuries can be severe – even life-changing. Under Minnesota law, you can pursue compensation through a personal injury lawsuit.
Introducing New Government Regulation on Toll Road.pdfAHRP Law Firm
For nearly two decades, Government Regulation Number 15 of 2005 on Toll Roads ("GR No. 15/2005") has served as the cornerstone of toll road legislation. However, with the emergence of various new developments and legal requirements, the Government has enacted Government Regulation Number 23 of 2024 on Toll Roads to replace GR No. 15/2005. This new regulation introduces several provisions impacting toll business entities and toll road users. Find out more out insights about this topic in our Legal Brief publication.
WINDING UP of COMPANY, Modes of DissolutionKHURRAMWALI
Winding up, also known as liquidation, refers to the legal and financial process of dissolving a company. It involves ceasing operations, selling assets, settling debts, and ultimately removing the company from the official business registry.
Here's a breakdown of the key aspects of winding up:
Reasons for Winding Up:
Insolvency: This is the most common reason, where the company cannot pay its debts. Creditors may initiate a compulsory winding up to recover their dues.
Voluntary Closure: The owners may decide to close the company due to reasons like reaching business goals, facing losses, or merging with another company.
Deadlock: If shareholders or directors cannot agree on how to run the company, a court may order a winding up.
Types of Winding Up:
Voluntary Winding Up: This is initiated by the company's shareholders through a resolution passed by a majority vote. There are two main types:
Members' Voluntary Winding Up: The company is solvent (has enough assets to pay off its debts) and shareholders will receive any remaining assets after debts are settled.
Creditors' Voluntary Winding Up: The company is insolvent and creditors will be prioritized in receiving payment from the sale of assets.
Compulsory Winding Up: This is initiated by a court order, typically at the request of creditors, government agencies, or even by the company itself if it's insolvent.
Process of Winding Up:
Appointment of Liquidator: A qualified professional is appointed to oversee the winding-up process. They are responsible for selling assets, paying off debts, and distributing any remaining funds.
Cease Trading: The company stops its regular business operations.
Notification of Creditors: Creditors are informed about the winding up and invited to submit their claims.
Sale of Assets: The company's assets are sold to generate cash to pay off creditors.
Payment of Debts: Creditors are paid according to a set order of priority, with secured creditors receiving payment before unsecured creditors.
Distribution to Shareholders: If there are any remaining funds after all debts are settled, they are distributed to shareholders according to their ownership stake.
Dissolution: Once all claims are settled and distributions made, the company is officially dissolved and removed from the business register.
Impact of Winding Up:
Employees: Employees will likely lose their jobs during the winding-up process.
Creditors: Creditors may not recover their debts in full, especially if the company is insolvent.
Shareholders: Shareholders may not receive any payout if the company's debts exceed its assets.
Winding up is a complex legal and financial process that can have significant consequences for all parties involved. It's important to seek professional legal and financial advice when considering winding up a company.
Military Commissions details LtCol Thomas Jasper as Detailed Defense CounselThomas (Tom) Jasper
Military Commissions Trial Judiciary, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Notice of the Chief Defense Counsel's detailing of LtCol Thomas F. Jasper, Jr. USMC, as Detailed Defense Counsel for Abd Al Hadi Al-Iraqi on 6 August 2014 in the case of United States v. Hadi al Iraqi (10026)
DNA Testing in Civil and Criminal Matters.pptxpatrons legal
Get insights into DNA testing and its application in civil and criminal matters. Find out how it contributes to fair and accurate legal proceedings. For more information: https://www.patronslegal.com/criminal-litigation.html
A "File Trademark" is a legal term referring to the registration of a unique symbol, logo, or name used to identify and distinguish products or services. This process provides legal protection, granting exclusive rights to the trademark owner, and helps prevent unauthorized use by competitors.
Visit Now: https://www.tumblr.com/trademark-quick/751620857551634432/ensure-legal-protection-file-your-trademark-with?source=share
2. Agenda
● Introduction to Copyright
● Spotting Infringement
● Fair Use: the Exception
● Useable Works: Public Domain & Creative Commons
3. Overview
● No protection for ideas
○ Expressions are protected, not the ideas themselves
○ Things common to a style (viking ships in a viking movie) aren’t copyrightable
● Procedures, processes, systems, concepts, and facts aren’t protected
● If a work is not protected by copyright, it is free to use
● To be protected by copyright, a work must be:
○ Original (independently created with some spark of creativity)
○ Fixed
4. Overview
● Protection attaches as soon as the work is created
● Can register with the US Copyright Office to get legal benefits
○ Online at copyright.gov for a small fee
● Gives copyright holder certain exclusive rights:
○ Make copies
○ Make derivative works
○ Distribute the work
○ Publicly perform/display the work
● Protection lasts for life of the author plus 70 years
5. Infringement
● Stepping on exclusive rights of the copyright holder
● Access to the work
○ Some element of copying
○ No infringement if independently created
● Substantial Similarity
○ Idea v. Expression
○ Remove unprotectable elements and compare
6.
7. Exceptions- Fair Use
● Fair use is a user’s right, or exception to, copyright law
○ Allows some otherwise infringing uses to be noninfringing
○ Don’t have to get permission from the copyright holder
● Meant to encourage development and creativity
○ Allows people to build upon the works of others
● Four Factors:
○ The purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is commercial or for
nonprofit educational purposes
○ The nature of the copyrighted work
○ The amount and substantiality of the portion used
○ The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
8.
9.
10.
11. Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix
● First factor: for fair use
○ Boldly! is not a parody, it’s a mashup, so the protection is slightly different
○ Very transformative, making it less important that the book was commercial
● Second factor: slightly against fair use
○ Creative, but published extensively and for a long time
● Third factor: for fair use
○ Used as much as was necessary to make the new transformative work
● Fourth factor: neutral
○ Not a replacement, more for people who have read Go!
○ Dr. Seuss does license some versions and does collaborations
Verdict: fair use
12. Public Domain
● Works that are in the public domain no longer have copyright protection
○ Copyright term of the work has expired
○ Copyright holder released the work to the public domain
● Free to use in any way without having to give attribution or worry about
copyright restrictions
● Works published in the US before 1924 are in the public domain
○ Gain new works on Jan
○ Should consult Cornell’s Copyright Term and the Public Domain chart for other works
● Works created by the US government are automatically in the public domain
13. Three Layers of CC Licenses
1. Legal Code
● Legally binding terms of the license
● Upheld in court
1. Human Readable Deed
● Clear, understandable version of the license
● Easy for everyone to use
1. Machine Readable Code
● Indexed by search engines and other sites
● Makes works easy to find
14. Types of CC Licenses
Attribution Non-Commercial
Share-A-Like No Derivatives
17. How to Attribute- TASL
“Miniature Schnauzer- Quincy 2” by Theodore Scott is licensed under CC BY.
18. Questions
?
Fair Use Codes of Best Practice
● Fair Use for Journalism
● Fair Use for Online Videos
U-M Library Copyright Office Guides
● Copyright Basics
● Obtaining Copyright Permission
● Creative Commons
Contact us at:
copyright@umich.edu
rnlanier@umich.edu
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License.
Editor's Notes
This presentation was created by Raven Lanier in April 2019. It is meant to be a general, high level overview of copyright law that helps people find out when they have problems and know when to get help or look for alternatives.
First, we’ll start by giving an introduction to copyright and a short explanation of how it works. Copyright doesn’t cover everything (though it may seem like it!), and it’s important to clear away some misconceptions before we get started. We’ll talk about the works that copyright covers and the works that it doesn’t and explain what rights copyright gives to creators.
After that, we’ll talk about what copyright infringement is, how to spot an infringement, and how to know if your use of a work is infringing.
Next we’ll talk about fair use, which is an exception to copyright law that can make an otherwise infringing use okay.
Finally, we’ll talk about ways to find works that are easy for you to use, including works that are in the public domain and have no copyright restrictions and works licensed under the easy to use and understand Creative Commons licenses.
I’ll make sure to leave time for questions at the end, but feel free to stop me and ask questions at any time if there’s anything you don’t understand.
One of the most important things to remember when thinking about copyright is that it isn’t meant to protect everything. For instance, copyright doesn’t protect ideas, just the way those ideas are expressed. If you write a book about two young people from different backgrounds falling in love despite their warring families, you can’t keep other people from writing a book, movie, or play about the same idea. But you could keep people from adapting your book into a screenplay, writing a sequel, or putting chapters of it up on the internet. Copyright also doesn’t protect things that are common to a sort of genre, like viking helmets and ships in a viking movie or standing out in the rain as you confess your love in a romcom. Neither does it protect procedures, processes, systems, concepts, or facts. So things like mathematics, laws of nature, and weights and measurements aren’t copyrightable, and neither are recipes or ingredients lists.
So what is protected by copyright? Basically, any original, creative type of expression that’s fixed. This includes the things you’d typically think of, like literary works, videos, all kinds of art, and music, but it also includes things like software and architecture. The bar for originality and creativity is very low. An alphabetical list of names and phone numbers are not creative enough to be covered by copyright, but the email you sent to your coworker yesterday is. We create things every day that copyright protects, from texts to photos to videos.
So we now know that we create works every single day (maybe even every hour!) that can be covered by copyright. How do you get copyright protection for your work? The good news is that you don’t have to do anything. Copyright protection applies automatically; you get it as soon as you create a copyrightable work. If you want to make it official and get some other legal benefits (like being able to sue if someone if they infringe on your copyright), you can register with the United States Copyright Office at copyright.gov.
As the copyright holder, you get a set of exclusive rights that give you a near monopoly over the work you created. Copyright law has some exceptions (one of them is fair use, which we’ll cover later), but basically lets you be the only person who can make copies, derivative works, distribute the work, or publically perform the work. If you write a song, you can keep people from being able to publicly perform it without paying you. You can also prevent people from making copies of the lyrics or music, distributing them to the public, or making a video based on your song. As the song’s copyright holder, you have control over who does what with your work. These rights will last for the length of your life (since you’re the creator) plus seventy years after. So if an author of a book died in 2010, the book would be protected until 2080, even if the author transferred the copyright in her book to a publisher or a family member.
Now that we’ve gone through a quick crash course on what copyright is and what it covers, we’re going to talk a little more in depth about how to know if you’re infringing on someone’s copyright. Since copyright applies automatically, nearly all creative works are protected. You infringe on the copyright holder’s rights if you do something that is covered by one of their exclusive rights. For example, if you share someone else’s photo on Twitter, you’re infringing on the photographer’s rights of distribution and public display. If you make copies of an article, you infringe on the right of reproduction. In a world where things are constantly being copied and shared with others, it can be really easy to infringe on someone else’s rights.
But imagine that you’re not creating an exact copy of someone else’s work. Maybe you write a song that happens to sound like another song, create a movie that seems like it’s based on someone else’s book, or take a picture that looks like someone else’s. To figure out if your works are infringing, courts look at two things. The first is whether or not you had access to the work you supposedly took from. If you can show that you had never seen the other work and created your own work completely independently, then you didn’t infringe on the original work. This can be harder to prove the closer the works are to each other-- it seems like too much of a coincidence if the two works are nearly identical. Then you look at whether the two works are substantially similar. Here is when the idea v. expression distinction is really important. Remember that copyright only protects creative expression, not the ideas that led to that expression. To see if two works are substantially similar, you have to take out all the unprotectable elements and then compare the two works. If they’re still similar, then the new work is infringing.
Take a few moments to look at these photos. The one on the left is a picture of Michael Jordan taken by Nike when he first signed with the Chicago Bulls; it later became the well-known Jump Man logo. The photo on the right is also Michael Jordan, but is a photo from earlier in his career and was taken by Rentmeester, a professional photographer. Rentmeester claimed that Nike infringed on his copyright in his photo and that the two photos were substantially similar.
What do you think? When you remove all of the unprotectable elements, are the photos still substantially similar? How many of you think yes, they are? How many of you think they are NOT substantially similar?
Those of you who said the two photos are NOT substantially similar are correct. How did we get there? First, remove all the unprotectable elements. Rentmeester couldn’t copyright the idea of taking a photo of Michael Jordan about to dunk a basketball. When you take that out, the pictures are pretty different. In the Nike photo, Jordan is bigger and more central. He looks like he’s definitely about to dunk the ball, and there’s the Chicago skyline in the background to represent his new city. In Rentmeester’s photo, Jordan is smaller and not as much the center of the photo. He’s farther from the hoop and it isn’t clear if he’s going to make it or not. When you really look at the photos, you can see that they aren’t really that similar at all. Because of that, the court found that Nike did not infringe on Rentmeester’s copyright.
As we’ve seen, it’s pretty easy to infringe on someone else’s copyright. If there weren’t any exceptions to copyright law, you would have to go to the copyright holder for every single use of their work that you wanted to make. Do you want to include quotes from a book in a news article? Make a parody of a well known song? Use a clip of a movie for a movie review? You’d need permission, or copyright law would keep you from doing all of these things.
Luckily, here in the US we have fair use, which allows us to make all of these uses, along with many others, without having to ask the copyright holder for permission every single time we want to use their work. Fair use is meant to encourage development and creativity by promoting certain favored uses including criticism, commentary, research, and teaching. Now, not every use is a fair use. If you think your use may be fair, you need to do an analysis that includes four factors.
The first factor is the purpose and character of the use, including whether or not the use is commercial or non profit and educational. For example, if you are using material in a classroom or for teaching, that would be an educational purpose and would weigh in favor of fair use. If your use was instead commercial in nature, like selling an image on t-shirts, it would weigh against fair use. This is also where you look at how transformative your use of the work is compared to the original work. Uses that give the original work a different purpose-- that transform it into something completely new with a different meaning and message-- are more likely to be a fair use. For example, taking someone else’s photograph and posting it on your own website simply for others to view it is not transformative, but displaying those photographs as thumbnails in an image search engine is.
The second factor is the nature of the copyrighted work: whether the work is factual or creative. If works are purely factual, they do not receive copyright protection. But for the works that are both factual and creative enough to be protectable, the copyright protection given to them is thinner than one given to a more creative work, and your use of that work is more likely to be fair under the second factor. The second factor also looks at whether a work is published or unpublished; if you use a work that’s unpublished, it’s less likely to be a fair use.
The third factor deals with both the quantity and the quality of the copyrighted work you use in your own. Taking a small portion of the copyrighted work will typically weigh more in favor of fair use than taking a larger portion or using the entire work. However, even using small portions of a work can weigh against fair use if the portion you’re taking is the most important part of the work. This factor is very context specific; the more transformative your use under the first factor, the more different it is from the original work, the more of the original work you can use.
The fourth factor is the effect your use has on the market or potential market for the original copyrighted work. If your use of the work would replace the original work in the market, it weighs heavily against fair use. An exception is made for critical commentary and parody; people no longer buying the original work because they’ve been convinced not to is much different than them buying your work instead because it is basically the same.
Now that we’ve learned about the four factors, let’s think about how we would apply them. The Seuss estate is known for being very protective of its copyrights, and there have been several lawsuits involving different Dr. Seuss books. The most recent one involved a play on Oh, the Places You’ll Go! entitled Oh, the Places You’ll Boldly Go! As you can probably guess, Boldly is all about Star Trek.
Here you can see the cover for both books. As you look at the images, you can see that the look and feel is very similar. The art style and font are both very similar, and the arrangement of characters and other elements mimics the Dr. Seuss books.
Here’s another example of the two works side by side. At the top you might recognize How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the bottom is a scene from Boldly.
Here’s one last comparison of Boldly and Go. What do you think? Was Boldly’s use of Dr. Seuss’s works a fair use, or was it not fair? Take a moment to think about the four factors we just discussed.
How many of you think Boldly is a fair use?
How many of you think it is NOT a fair use?
Let’s look at how the court thought about the factors.
The first factor weighed in favor of fair use. Although they didn’t find Boldly to be a parody (which means something more specific in copyright law than you might think), they did find it to be a mashup of Star Trek and Dr. Seuss. They also found that the book was incredibly transformative and gave the original Dr. Seuss books a different purpose and meaning, and this made it less important that the book was being sold commercially.
The second factor weighed slightly against fair use. Go is an incredibly creative work and is at the core of what copyright protects, but it has been published for a long time and a lot of copies have been sold.
The third factor weighed in favor of fair use. The court found that Boldly used as much from the original Dr. Seuss works as it needed to be a transformative mashup. It didn’t matter that Boldly could have used less of the Seuss works; it didn’t use too much, and that’s the important part.
The fourth factor was neutral and did not weigh for or against fair use. There was no evidence that Boldly would hurt the market for Go. In fact, it was likely that the only people who would be interested in Boldly would be people who had already read and were familiar with Go. But Dr. Seuss did license some different versions of Go and worked with others on collaborations. Overall, none of this was enough to sway the factor in one way or another.
So what was the verdict? Recently, the court found that Boldly was a fair use. Dr. Seuss will likely appeal, meaning this case isn’t quite over yet, so if you’re interested, you may want to watch the news about this one.
As you’ve seen, fair use can be complicated. It may seem like copyright has put you between a rock and a hard place when it comes to using works without infringing on the rights are others. Don’t fret! There are a lot of works out there that you can use without having to worry about copyright restrictions.
The first category of works you can use are works that are in the public domain. The public domain is filled with works whose authors have given up their copyright term or whose copyright term has run out; this means they don’t have any copyright restrictions at all. You are free to use a public domain work in any way you want-- edit it, add to it, sell it-- all without having to ask for permission, do a fair use analysis, or even attribute back to the original author.
All works that were published in the US before 1924 are now in the public domain, as well as all works created by the US government. Some other works that were published before 1989 could also be in the public domain because they didn’t comply with formalities that were required at the time (but were no longer required after 1989). If you’re interested in using a certain work that was published before 1989, you can use Cornell’s Copyright Term and the Public Domain chart (linked above) to help figure out if the work is in the public domain.
I realize that most of you aren’t really that interested in using worked that were published before 1924, but there are also a lot of modern works that have been donated to the public domain. In a moment I’ll go over how you can find these works, along with others you can easily use.
Another option for easy to use works are works that are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons created a set of licenses that are meant to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users. CC licenses give copyright holders the ability to pick how they would allow others to use their work, all while getting what many of them want the most: credit. And in return, users can share, edit, remix, and build upon the work, benefitting both society and the original copyright holder.
In order to work efficiently, CC licenses are made up of three layers: the legal code, the human readable deed, and the machine readable code. The legal code is the foundation of the license, and is the part of the license that is binding and can be upheld in court. The second layer is the human readable code. Creative Commons realizes legalese isn’t a language spoken by most, so it translated the language of its licenses into something that can be easily understood and used by the average person. The final layer, the machine readable code, allows search engines like Google to easily find and provide CC licensed works to people who are interested in using them. All three layers are crucial to ensuring the licenses success in connecting copyright holders and users.
CC licenses come in four different varieties: attribution (BY), share-a-like (SA), non-commercial (NC), and no derivatives (ND). All licenses include attribution, but the other options are up to the copyright holder. Copyright holders can pick and choose from combinations of the four varieties to let users know exactly how they’re okay with them using their works. For example, if a musician was okay with people remixing, reusing, and even reselling their music, but wanted to make sure those new works were under a CC license, the musician would license the song CC BY-SA. If the musician didn’t care what people did with the song, as long as they didn’t sell it, they would choose CC BY-NC. Creative Commons is flexible and adaptable to the needs of each copyright holder; no matter what you’re interested in, CC licenses can provide the right type of license to meet your needs.
Google gives you the ability to filter your search results by different CC licenses. Once you run a Google Image search, click tools. That then gives you the option of filtering by license. Clicking “labeled for reuse” will give you images that are licensed CC-BY or are in the public domain.
Flickr, Youtube, and Vimeo also have works licensed under CC licenses and have ways to filter your search based on the license. Another good option is Wikimedia Commons; all images on Wikimedia commons are under a CC license or are in the public domain. And if you’re looking for public domain books, you can search HathiTrust’s library, which will let you read thousands of public domain books online for free.
All CC licenses require attribution back to the original author. Here is an example of how to both find the information you need for an attribution and how to organize it into an attribution. When making an attribution, remember the acronym TASL: the title of the work is given, the author of the work is given, the title is linked to the source image, and a link to the CC license is provided. You need to provide this information-- title, author, source, and license-- so the work can be easily found again if someone else wants to use it. The CC license is particularly important to include so that people can read the license and know how they can later use the work.
Attributions can be placed anywhere. They can be put under an image, at the end of a slide deck or article, or on a separate “Attributions” page on a website. Whatever route you choose to go, try to be consistent so others know where they can find the attribution information.