Is It Fair Use?

You just bought a really cool painting from an artist. After taking it home, you take a picture, print the design for shirts, posters, phone cases and more, and start selling it on your website. Is this likely to be judged as fair use?

• Yes, because your work is transformative, changing the image from a painting to a shirt, etc.

• No, because your work uses the whole image unaltered, you're profiting and distributing your work widely.

• No, because your shirts and phone cases will drive up demand for the original painting, increasing its value.

• Yes, because you now own the copyright; you are just exercising your right to make copies.

A famous athlete has just been arrested. You're a reporter for your school newspaper and are charged with writing a story on the subject. You decide to include a copyrighted image of the athlete as part of your article. Is this fair use?

• No, because neither you nor your newspaper have licensed usage of the image with the rights' holder.

• Yes, because the newspaper is a school publication and that makes the usage educational.

• No, because your usage of the image is not transformative in any way; it was a picture of the athlete and it still is now.

• Yes, because it is being used for the purposes of reporting on a newsworthy event.

You are teaching about Shakespeare in an English class and want to show your students a few scenes illustrating different ways that Shakespeare's plays have been adapted to film. Is this covered under fair use?

• Yes, because you are using limited clips to illustrate specific educational purposes to a limited audience of your own students one time.

• Yes, because you own copies of each film on DVD and so can screen them for whomever and wherever you like.

• Yes, because teaching is a hard job and sometimes it is okay to let the students have a free day with some movies and popcorn.

• Yes, because you have transformed the copyrighted material into a new artistic work by creating a montage of clips that you have arranged in a specific order to make a new statement about Shakespeare.

You have a popular book discussion podcast and YouTube channel and for your next episode you're going to review a popular author's new novel. In order to illustrate points from your analysis, you choose to quote several sentences from the book. Is this fair you?

• Yes, because criticism and commentary are well-defined reasons for the existence of fair use and it is necessary to have material for that critique or comment.

• Yes, because you are attributing the material appropriately to the correct work and the correct author.

• Yes, but only if you read the portions aloud on your podcast AND on your YouTube video; if you provide the text as well, then you have failed to "transform" it.

• Yes, but only if your review is positive; a negative review that quotes heavily form the material in question could affect the intended market for that item.

Bonus Question: You are an electronic musician and you want to create a new song using sampled clips from various presidential speeches, but rearranging them so that the song conveys a message in opposition to the original meanings of the various speeches. Is this fair use?

• Yes, but only if you rerecord yourself delivering the speeches, because only the text of presidential speeches, not the audio, is in the public domain.

• No, because all government documents, including presidential speeches, have been granted a special copyright protection that prohibits fair use.

• No, because all presidential speeches are in the public domain and fair use is not needed to make use of material in the public domain.

• Yes, but only if your rearrangement changes the meaning; if you only quote the songs then you have not created something suitably transformative.