Fair Use Week is Here!

The week of Monday, February 24th is Fair Use Week! This week celebrates the fair use laws in the United States that allow sharing of copyrighted material under certain circumstances. Upholding the doctrines of fair use is vitally important to the spread of information, especially for students, faculty, and librarians.

How Fair Use Helps

Fair use helps everything from news reporting to indexing information. It also helps when funding scholarships for research, creating websites that share information, and innovating new products. Creation of music and art also uses fair use laws. Check out everything fair use laws help with at the Fair Use Promotes the Creation of New Knowledge infographic provided by the Association of Research Libraries.

Fair Use in Daily Life

Every time you search for an online PDF, study guide, or definition of a term, fair use laws allow you to access that information. Even scanning or taking pictures of printed works, such as books or worksheets, is possible due to laws protecting your personal use of information. Fair use not only helps you in your academic work, but also in your social media when sharing pictures that you took or listening to remixes of songs. For more information, check out the Fair Use in a Day in the Life of a College Student infographic.

Fair Use Facts

Fair use is a right for everyone, recognized by the Copyright Act. Guidelines from court cases and the statute itself show the variety of ways fair use laws can be applied. Fair use laws are in place in over 40 countries all around the world! If you want to learn even more about how the laws themselves work, check out the Fair Use Myths & Facts infographic.