What is fair use?

Fair use is an exception to the rights of copyright holders that allows users to copy small parts of copyrighted works under certain circumstances without seeking permission or paying royalties. Fair use is probably the most important exception for educational settings, allowing many uses of copyrighted works for the purposes of teaching and research.

Use Messiah University's Fair Use Evaluation Tool to help you weigh the four factors of fair use. Note that the four factors should be reviewed holistically; some factors may not be weighed equally when evaluated in court. For example, if you use a large portion of the work or are replacing the sale of a copyrighted work, that may factor more heavily toward unfair use, even if there are more checkmarks in the "favors fair use" category.

Remember, fair use is a guideline, not a rule. Any fair use analysis must be conducted on a case-by-case basis. Use these tools to help you evaluate your usage, and keep documentation of your evaluation process and checklists for future reference. When in doubt, obtain permission to avoid any potential legal challenges brought by copyright holders.

This chart can help you determine fair use in conjunction with Messiah University's Fair Use Evaluation Tool:

For this factor...	It is more likely to be fair use if...	It is less likely to be fair use if...
Purpose	Not for profit An educational use A transformation rather than a mere reproduction of the original work	For a profit Not an educational use Not a transformation but a reproduction of the original work
Nature	A published work A more factual work Directly relevant to the educational purpose	An unpublished work A more creative/ original work
Amount	Only small portions relative to the whole work are used Directly relevant to the educational purpose Only the amount required to meet the educational purpose is used	Substantial portions or the entirety of the work are used The "heart of the work" is used Not directly relevant to educational objectives
Market	Of little economic impact	Of direct economic impact on an existing or potential market for the work (e.g. could replace the sale of the copyrighted work)

Additional resources for fair use

Take a deeper dive with the University of Southern Indiana's Fair Use & Copyright Decision Tree
What is Transformative Use? A resource from NOLO, one of the web's largest libraries of free, consumer-friendly legal information.
Messiah University's Fair Use Evaluation Tool will help you weigh the four factors of fair use and provide a record for you to keep to show that you considered relevant issues.

Questions? Contact your liaison librarian!

What is fair use?

For this factor...

It is more likely to be fair use if...

It is less likely to be fair use if...

Additional resources for fair use