Welcome to the annual Fair Use Week, normally the third week in Februar! This week, we celebrate the important role fair use plays in giving us a breathing space in Copyright Law. Fair use allows us to use copyrighted works without permission in situations such as commentary, criticism, research, and teaching. It's fair use that makes it possible to quote, remix, make fun of, transform, and build on other people's copyrighted work. The flexible nature of the fair use doctrine has permitted copyright to adapt to new technologies and changes. Fair use is a right - not an exception or a defense.The Supreme Court has regularly referred to fair use as a "safeguard" of the First Amendment, allowing copyright law to be compatible with the First Amendment.
While we celebrate Fair Use Week this week, we believe that every week is fair use week. Indeed, fair use is employed on a daily basis by students, faculty, librarians, journalists, and all users of copyrighted material. Fair Use Week is a time to promote and discuss the opportunities presented by fair use, celebrate successful fair use stories, and explain the doctrine.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2017: 12:00 – 1:00 P.M.
Fair use plays a crucial role as copyright’s safety valve for free expression because it permits unauthorized copying in service of the public good. This role, which enables everything from scathing reviews of artwork to wholesale digitization of books for accessibility, is taking on new currency as librarians scramble to preserve contested government information online. From deleted climate data, disappearing government web pages, and ephemeral political tweets, fair use cuts through the legal confusion so we can maintain the historical and scientific record. This webinar will introduce fair use as an equitable doctrine designed to support librarianship and prepare participants to apply fair use in their own communities’ work.
Learning outcomes:
Presenters: William M. Cross is the Director of the Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center in the North Carolina State University Libraries. He speaks and writes nationally on copyright, scholarly communication, and open culture. He is also a presenter for the ACRL workshop and a presenter for the ACRL workshop, Scholarly Communication: From Understanding to Engagement. Read more about Will in his ACRL member of the week profile.
Lillian Rigling is a North Carolina State University Libraries Fellow, working in the Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center and the User Experience Department. She coordinates outreach, instruction, and engagement around issues of author’s rights, copyright, and open culture at NCSU for students and faculty. Previously, she worked as a Graduate Assistant in the Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office at the University of Toronto.
View the archived webinar on YouTube.
Co-hosted by MIT and Harvard, this live-streamed panel discussion will explore the barriers and issues that arise when scholarly publishers consider whether to allow fair use as a basis for inclusion of 3rd party material in scholarly articles and books, and will consider the implications for authors and the scholarly publishing process. Has the recent increase in fair use decisions in the federal courts convinced some publishers that fair use is a powerful and viable right, while still mitigating risk for their business model?
The panel will include perspectives from a university press publisher, author, and attorney/librarian as moderator.
Speakers include:
Nick Lindsay, Journals Director, MIT Press
Bill Smith, Director of Intellectual Property Licensing MIT Press
Author and Harvard Librarian—Coming Soon, TBA
Kyle K. Courtney, Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, Attorney and librarian—moderator and panelist
All are welcome—and the event will be live-streamed—connect via http://webcast.amps.ms.mit.edu/spr2016/Lib/1608/4/index.html
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 TO FEBRUARY 25, 2016 @ 12:00 — 1:00 P.M. ARIZONA TIME
The language of the fair use factors has changed very little since the nineteenth century, but the doctrine of fair use has changed a great deal. Understanding the history of the factors, particularly their changing importance, is crucial to making accurate fair use decisions today. This webcast will focus on fair use cases from the last forty years, tracing the relative importance of the four statutory factors and their subfactors. Participants will then be asked to practice applying current fair use law to a series of hypothetical fact patterns.
Learning outcomes:
1. Learn the history of fair use factors and subfactors including commerciality, publication status, and transformativeness.
2, Learn the current relative importance of the four fair use factors and their subfactors.
3. Use this knowledge of the fair use factors to make fair use decisions.
Presenter: Ana Enriquez is a copyright lawyer who focuses on the issues facing libraries, universities, and other cultural institutions. She has taught copyright and internet law in several contexts, including as the Head Teaching Fellow for the online course CopyrightX from 2013 to 2015. She is a member of the Illinois and Massachusetts bars and is a graduate of Berkeley Law and Harvard College.
