Best Practices

Fair use plays an important role in helping copyright law adapt to evolving technologies and the resulting uses of others' works. Fair use allows us to use copyrighted works without permission in situations such as commentary, criticism, research, and teaching, making it possible to build on the works of others, quoting, remixing, transforming.

Fair Use Codes of Best Practice

As part of its mission to provide educational support to creatives in media, the Center for Media & Social Impact (CMSI) at American University’s School of Communication develops tools and resources to contribute to a better understanding of how to employ fair use, the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment, under some circumstances. Filmmakers, journalists, teachers, visual arts professionals, librarians, archivists and more collaborated with CMSI to clarify how fair use works with their most common practices.

Visit cmsimpact.org/resources/codes for more information and to read the following codes and resources

• Statement on the Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study
• Fair Use Language for Course Syllabi
• Fair Use Scenarios
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts

See also, cmsimpact.org/codes-of-best-practices/