From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 03/07/01-06:18:23 AM Z
It may be instructive to look at the notes on Section 107 (the fair use
section of the copyright law) provided at
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
After reading the section of the statute, which is very short and worth
reading (I don't know, wouldn't it be good to know what the law actually
SAYS about fair use?) click on Notes on the menu to the right. Because
the law is written deliberately vaguely to allow for consideration of
each case on an individual basis, an Ad Hoc Committee was appointed to
write up guidelines especially for teachers confused about what can be
considered fair use in making copies for educational purposes; these
guidelines are presented in full in these notes. The guidelines aren't
written into the law itself but are provided simply as, well,
guidelines. They are extremely specific, spelling out exactly what might
be copied for a teacher's use in preparing a class, what might be copied
for the entire class, and how many instances of multiple copying might
be allowed during the term of any given course (The answer is 9) in
order to be covered by fair use. These guidelines are apparently the
source of the 10% number, although the exact wording says that multiple
copies for classroom use may be made of an excerpt of "not more than
1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less."
At the university where I taught in the 80s, the rule was that you could
copy a chapter from a book only if the book was no longer in print; if
the book was in print and you wanted to use it in your class, the
students had to buy it. I'm sure that if you were the author of the book
you would agree that this is only fair.
I agree with Brian in principle that lawyers should talk about law and
photographers should talk about photography, but the problem is that in
one way or another, we are dealing with these issues all the time, and
as evidenced by the misinformation shared here, what most of us know
about fair use ain't necessarily so.
Katharine Thayer
Brian Ellis wrote:
>
> "Fair Use" is a more complex and uncertain principle than many of the
> messages in this thread would indicate. There are no fixed rules - each case
> stands on its own facts, as the four criteria for fair use set out in
> Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 are applied to those facts. There
> certainly is nothing like the 10% principle mentioned here, nor is there any
> absolute prohibition against an instructor copying a chapter from a book and
> passing it out to the class, as someone else said (the opening language of
> Section 107 specifically refers to making multiple copies for classroom
> distribution or words to that effect as a potential fair use).
>
>
> I hope that anyone reading this thread doesn't rely on anything said here in
> deciding whether a particular use is a fair use. Much of what has been said
> is misleading, some of it is incorrect.
>
> It might be best to let the lawyers practice law and the photographers talk
> about photography.
>
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