Pixiq

Copyright law gives the creator the exclusive rights to reproduce, distribute, and publish their work and/or grant one or more of those rights—via a “license” or permission—to others such as publishers and filmmakers. Typically the creator receives a fee (money) from someone obtaining one or more of the rights the creator by law possesses. In a sense, the creator owns a monopoly on the work but there are exceptions to this absolute control.

One exception is known as “fair use,“ and it is mistakenly asserted about as often as it is legitimately relied upon. The concept green-lights the efforts of a non-author to copy, publish, or distribute certain copyrighted works without the consent of the creator or registrant for purposes such as commentary, news reporting, education, or scholarship. Historically, copyright law has always been about a “balancing act” between the benefits to society and the rights of creators.

There is no cut-and-dry, black-and-white, mileage-chart method to conclusively determine whether a use definitively qualifies as a “fair use,“ and thus permissible without the author’s consent. The law does, however, set forth certain key factors in order to be able to adjudicate each dispute on a case-by-case basis:

• Whether the nature of the use was for commercial use or for nonprofit, educational purposes

• The nature of the work itself

• The amount of the work appropriated (was the whole work taken or a small portion?)

• The effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the appropriated work

The above four factors are not the only factors a court will examine in such cases. There have been thousands of cases in the court system over the last 30+ years where lawyers and judges bashed heads.