Fair Use

[top_barrister]

Does anyone here know anything about any law on "fair use."

[Nico]

I believe there are a few people here that know about Fair Use and Copyright issues. What do you need exactly?

[top_barrister]

Well, nowadays, the editorial content of some web sites are being outsourced elsewhere. sometimes, the writers do a little research in the internet and use some materials that are already existing...

so my question is how much of a written work can you use in order to qualify it as still fair use?

thanks!

[Chris]

There is no set percentage, and also the reason for your use matters. For instance are you using 1 paragraph from an article to do a critique, or are you using 1 paragraph and reselling it as a product.

[agua]

Just to add to this, does anyone know the 'fair use' of images?

I was always under the impression that you cannot take other peoples images and use them period. But the other day I was speaking with a friend, who is very knowledgeable about the law (its part of her job), said to me that so long as the image is altered over 15% - then its fair game.

Can anyone clarify that?

[Chris]

No, she's really confused, unless Australian law is different.

The single largest copyright myth is that if you alter something 10 of 15% you can use it. But, in fact, the right to alter something (make derivative works) is a right granted only to the copyright holder, so the very act of altering something is illegal and all the person has to prove in court is that you used their work as a starting off point.

Fair use and the right to make derivative works are two wholly different issues really.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

[Nico]

Another link that could help: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html#movies

[KLB]

Another really reliable source on the subject of fair use is: http://chillingeffects.org/fairuse/faq.cgi

[agua]

Thanks for the links :)

Being a designer - I've always thought that images & photograps cannot be touched as they are instantly copyrighted upon creation...

I was just interested in whether things had changed with the introduction of Google's and MSN's image search - which seem to be questioning the idea of image copyright by making images so accessible to the masses

[rpanella]

I believe Google and Yahoo get away with it by only showing thumbnails of the images and by linking them to the original source, which I guess falls under fair use.
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[top_barrister]

thanks for the reply...

i have another question... how do you enforce the fair use doctrine if for example it is violated in the internet and the violator is in another country?

thanks

[Chris]

You don't have many options.

Some countries have treaties so you can sue them, but it is expensive.

The easiest thing is if they host in the US you can get their hosting shut down, or get them kicked out of search engines.