What's right about fair‐use guidelines for the academic community?

Abstract

Are fair-use guidelines advisable for the academic community? Experience has demonstrated that fair-use guidelines do assist organizations and individuals who wish to comply with the copyright law. Guidelines help clarify and simplify the application of fair-use principles when educators reproduce and use copies of copyrighted works without permission for nonprofit educational purposes. Although the Copyright Act of 1976 provides four nonexclusive fair-use factors for evaluating proposed fair uses, these factors are often characterized as vague and ambiguous standards that do not provide specific guidance for educators, and are subjective in their interpretation. Scholars, educators, and students who follow the criteria outlined in mutually accepted educational fair-use guidelines, which have been developed through a collaborative negotiation process that includes endorsements from both user and rightsholder organizations, can be assured of a “safe harbor” in which users are acting within the spirit of copyright principles and are not in violation of the law when they abide by the criteria in endorsed guidelines. Such guidelines do not limit the application of fair-use principles because individual fair use does extend beyond endorsed guidelines, although every use beyond the guidelines' agreed-upon criteria must be individually evaluated according to the vague fair-use factors of the copyright law, which are open to various interpretations.