Best Practices in Copyright and Fair Use
The first code for best practices on fair use was the Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use. It was created because documentary filmmakers found they were asked, unnecessarily, to clear permissions by legal departments, or even being sued for use of copyrighted material even though their use was legal. Since then, the best practices document has been helpful in setting standards for filmmakers, studios, lawyers, educators, and all sorts of people who might not be familiar with both copyright law and what is best practice. We've included some examples below, but you can find more fair use statements and educational materials - for journalism, media studies publishing, and dance-related materials among others - through the Center for Media & Social Impact.
- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online VideoThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video is published by the Center for Social and Media Impact.
From the website: This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances. - Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for PoetryThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry was written with the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, the American University's Center for Social Media, and the Washington College of Law. From the website: Devised specifically by and for the poetry community, this best practices code serves as a guide to reasonable and appropriate uses of copyrighted materials in new and old media. "This document," says project advisor Lewis Hyde, "brings wonderful clarity to the otherwise opaque world of poetry permissions. It is a useful tool that should serve poets, critics, and publishers alike." HMPI thanks all of the poets who gave so freely of their time and experiences to help make this document possible.
- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual ArtsThe Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts is published by the College Art Association.
From the website: It provides visual-arts professionals with a set of principles addressing best practices in the fair use of copyrighted materials. It describes how fair use can be invoked and implemented when using copyrighted materials in:
- Analytic Writing: When may scholars and other writers about art invoke fair use to quote, excerpt, or reproduce copyrighted works?
- Teaching about Art: When may teachers invoke fair use in using copyrighted works to support formal instruction in a range of settings, including online and distance teaching?
- Making Art: Under what circumstances may artists invoke fair use to incorporate copyrighted material into new artworks in any medium?
- Museum Uses: When may museums and their staffs invoke fair use in using copyrighted works—including images and text as well as time-based and born-digital material—when organizing exhibitions, developing educational materials (within the museum and online), publishing catalogues, and other related activities?
- Online Access to Archival and Special Collections: When may such institutions and their staffs invoke fair use to create digital preservation copies and/or enable digital access to copyrighted materials in their collections? - Guidelines for the Use of Copyrighted Materials and Works of Art by Art MuseumsFrom the Association of Art Museum Directors, last revised March 2017 and quite detailed.
- Rights Statements for Cultural Heritage InstitutionsFrom the website: RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public. Our rights statements are supported by major aggregation platforms such as the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana. The rights statements have been designed with both human users and machine users (such as search engines) in mind and make use of semantic web technology.
- Society for Cinema and Media Studies’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use in Teaching for Film and Media EducatorsThis code of best practices in fair use in teaching for film/media educators was designed by The Society for Cinema and Media Studies. It deals with classroom screenings, broadcasts, and derivative works.
- Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and StudyFrom the website: The Visual Resources Association has released its own code of best practices in fair use. It will be enormously valuable to art teachers, librarians, curators, publishers and more...The Statement should allow students, faculty, and other professionals to get back to work. It describes six uses of copyrighted still images that the VRA believes fall within the U.S. doctrine of fair use.