U.S. Copyright Office Fact Sheet
Fair Use of Copyrighted Materials
From the University of Texas.
Proposed Educational Guidelines on Fair Use
The Web site, provided by the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center, outlines the proposed guidelines discussed during the Patent and Trademark Office's Conference on Fair Use (CONFU).
Exceptions for Instructors in U.S. Copyright Law
The ALA Office of Information Technology Policy shows you how to apply fair use criteria to resources you choose to use in both face-to-face and online classes.
The Fair Use Analysis Tool, created by the University of Minnesota Libraries, walks you through the process to determine fair use.
This tool, created by the ALA Office for Information Technology Policy, helps you evaluate the fair use of a copyrighted work as well as archives the data and process you use to determine fair use.
The Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center blog.
The fair use doctrine allows, under certain circumstances, for certain limited uses of copyrighted works without obtaining copyright permission from the copyright holder. For example, under the fair use doctrine, one may make copies for "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research" (Section 107).
To date there is no part of the law that specifically states that if you copy and use X amount of an item for Y purpose then it is protected under fair use.
In short, applying fair use can be hard as there is no precise, clear cut determination for what is or is not allowed. At present, a "four factors" test is used to determine if a proposed use is fair or not. An important note, these four factors must be considered together with no one factor "trumping" the other three.
These factors are:
(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 substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
With regards to factor 1, the mentality of "Well, I'm doing this for school so it must automatically be fair use" can be dangerous. Remember that you have to give equal weight to all four factors when determining fair use.
For Example:
An instructor who wants to copy one chapter from one book for course reserves may be able to do so under fair use, however making several chapters from the same book available on course reserves may not be considered fair use.
To help you understand fair use, watch the video below from Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, created by Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University.