#4 Fair Use -- Did I say you could use that?

In the Copyright Act, Section 107, it deals with the limitations a owner of a copyright has to reproduce or to authorize the use of the work. The most important limitation is that of 'fair use'. Section 107 has four factors to determine if something if of 'fair use'.

The four factors are:

1. the purpose and chracter of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2. the nature of the copyrighted work;

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

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

If there is any doubt that you may not be using 'fair use' then you should always ask for permission of the copyright owner or contact an attorney.

There are many websites that provide the use of pictures under what is called a creative commons license. Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that were released December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001.
Many of the licences, notably all the original licences, grant certain "baseline rights", such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work without changes, at no charge. Some of the newer licences do not grant these rights.

• http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/


• http://openphoto.net/


• http://www.creative-commons.org/

There are many other licensing available. Here is a list:

• Attribution (by): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based upon it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.


• Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.


• No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.


• ShareAlike (sa): Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work. (See also copyleft.)

I posted on Peg and Josh's blogs.