Fair Use:
def. - A doctrine in the United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders.
The term Fair Use is unique in the United States, although there is a common term, fair dealing, in other common law jurisdictions.
I believe that this must be present with the way the Internet has become a primary source for research and information. This class especially needs to be aware of the term due to the building/designing of a webite. An interesting case for you to read about 'fair use on the internet' is, Kelly vs. Arriba Soft Corporation. The result of this case used the four determining factors that are used to decide fair use. They are as follows:
- purpose and character of the use,
- nature of the copyright work,
- amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole,
- and the effect of the use on the potential market for the copyrighted work.
Of course the courts are allowed to consider other factors as well.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig. The original Creative Common License grants the "baseline rights"; attribution, noncommercial, no derivative works, and sharealike. Combined the baseline rights can create 16 possible combinations, which only 11 are valid licenses.
When researching this information I came across several other licenses such as sampling, developing nations, and free art license.
Some websites related to fair use/licenses:
Creative Commons, SU LAIR-Copyright and Fair Use, and MultiChannel Merchant.
I posted comments on: Laslo's Blog and Laura's Land =)
