Skip to Main Content

Copyright and Fair Use

What is Fair Use?

Fair use, at its most basic, is the unlicensed use of copyrighted works in certain circumstances.


Fair use promotes freedom of expression but the use must meet certain criteria to be legal. It presumes the use is minimal enough that it does not interfere with the copyright holder's rights.

Uses that may quality for fair use are:

  • Criticism
  • Commentary
  • News Reporting
  • Teaching
  • Scholarship
  • Research

Outside of the UT System license, use of copyrighted material is dependent on Fair Use, which is defined under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Law.

Four Factors of Fair Use

It is always important to analyze how you are going to use a particular work against the following four factors of fair use:

Purpose and Character: What is your purpose in using the materials? Are you going to use the material for monetary gain or for education or research purposes?

Nature: What is the characteristic nature of work - is it fact or fiction; has it been published or not?


Courts provide more protection to works of art and fiction than they do to factual or nonfiction works.

Amount: How much of the work are you going to use? Small amount or large? Is it the significant or central part of the work?

Amount is a very important factor to consider. Using large portions of a work is less likely to pass fair use muster. Always consider the size of a work in this context. Using 20 pages of a 500 page book is not a significant portion, whereas 20 pages out of a 50 page book would be.

Effect: How will your use of the work effect the author's or publisher's ability to sell the material? If your purpose is for research or education, your effect on the market value may be difficult to prove. However, if your purpose is commercial gain, then you are not following fair use.


A few things to consider:

  • Is the work in or out of print?
  • Is it rare or common to find? Would it be easy for someone to access a copy themselves?
  • Is the work still in copyright?
  • Will my use of the work confuse people as to which might be the original?

Fair Use Tools

The following charts can provide helpful information on deciding if you are using copyrighted material fairly:

  • Fair Use Checklist - Columbia University Libraries, written by Dr. Kenneth D. Crews.
  • Fair Use Evaluator - can help you decide if you are using copyrighted material "fairly" under the U.S. Copyright Law. 

Further Reading