Cyberspace Copyright: Fair Use


We include this sidebar on the Fair Use provision of U.S. Copyright law since it is such a complex issue. Through the course of this web, we generally refer of the 10% rule. This is not entirely accurate. In actuality, there is no rule, per se. Section 107 of U.S. Copyright law states:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work ... is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Section 107 does not, however, give any concrete rules on fair use. In a joint letter to U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee Chairman Kastenmeier, dated March 19, 1976, the representatives of the Ad Hoc Committee of Educational Institutions and Organizations on Copyright Law Revision, and of the Authors League of America, Inc., and the Association of American Publishers, Inc. set forth guidelines for educational fair use. They were not meant to be laws, so as to protect against any special circumstances or special types of writing not included in the guidelines. The portion of these Guidelines which we consider most relevant is the section on prose which states that the copying must meet the following test of brevity:
(ii) Prose: (a) Either a complete article, story or essay of less than 2,500 words, or (b) an excerpt from any prose work of not more than 1,000 words or 10% of the work, whichever is less, but in any event a minimum of 500 words.

[Each of the numerical limits stated in "i" ... above may be expanded to permit the completion of ... an unfinished prose paragraph.]

We consider this to be the most pertinent information on copyrights on the World Wide Web. We are making the assumption that most quoting of articles and other web pages would be for academic purposes, and also that most quoted web pages would fall under the above guidelines for prose.

Most information for this side bar was taken from Circular 21 from the United States Copyright Office.

For further information on the fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, see the following from the U.S. Copyright Office:

Copyright 1996 Allan Kotmel and Paulo Morales
Created for Writing to the World Wide Web at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Questions and comments can be emailed to Allan at kotmea@rpi.edu or to Paulo at moralp@rpi.edu